


Look What This Love's Done

by Ncj700



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Acxa & Keith (Voltron) are Twins, Allura has poor motivation skills, Another DarkFic, Blood, Dark Protagonists, Even Lance thinks the Twins are weird, F/M, I SWEAR THIS FIC DOESN'T NEED TLDRs, I accidentally made Pidge suffer again, I has too much fun with Love Somebody, I think this technically counts as stalking, I'm Sorry, In Which Katie is Arguably Too Intelligent For Her Own Good, In which Pidge & Matt Talk, It's Not Quite Incest, Katie is making poor life choices, Keith Still Doesn't Know What Restraint Means, Keith doesnt think its torture but he’s biased, Keith is more dramatic than he needs to be whatever universe he’s in, Keith is never going to master the art of subtlety, Kidge - Freeform, Lance Has Some Fun Though, Look I actually gave Shiro scene time in a fic!, Magic AU, Matt has concerns, Matt needs help too, Other, Romelle and Matt are the MVPs, YOUR FAVES ARE EVIL AU, blood warning, hes not wrong, its not major i swear, stealing sacred rituals is never the solution, they have a weird relationship, torture depending on the camp you’re in
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:54:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 35,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28817394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ncj700/pseuds/Ncj700
Summary: The Komarian Order is in limbo, straggling by a thread, snaring quintessence and remaining a thorn in Oriande’s side; a final High Priestess is all that’s needed to complete a centuries old ritual and open the world to their hunger. An Oriandean acolyte on the precipice of full dedication, Katie Holt is plagued by memories she can’t remember, and the hunger for more; a chance meeting with a Komaric Priest holding a decade old grudge, who wants to give her exactly that, is only the beginning.
Relationships: Keith/Pidge | Katie Holt
Comments: 37
Kudos: 34





	1. A Fix When You Fall Down

“Katie, would you do the class the honour of giving us you attention, or is it too beneath you to take part in the group debate?”

Katie looked up from her phone at the whiteboard from the seat she’d taken about thirty minutes previously. The teacher was looking at her with an unimpressed stare, arms crossed and waiting for her to respond; several heads were turned in her direction from the other students in the room, and she sighed, looking away from the scrying app, and turning instead to the questions.

Katie’s phone was–to a discerning eye–not mainstream. Mostly because it was powered by a magical storage crystal rather than a Li-Poly battery, and it was predominantly used for arcane rituals rather than any messaging service or phone call system. It could be inferred from a simple glance at her phone’s internal components that Katie Holt was not as human as she looked.

The assumption would be correct, but given that she had gone to great lengths to ensure it went undetected to human eyes, the difference escaped nearly all of her classmates.

“The binary is three digits off,” she said. “Two more one’s and a zero.”

The teacher frowned at her but she waited a beat. “Correct,” he said finally, almost reluctantly, before turning back to the board, flicking through a few more slideshows. 

Katie waited approximately three minutes before returning back to her phone, opening up the app, biting her lip as she logged back into what the ignorant humans around her would see as nothing more than a GPS application.

After learning what she needed to about mortal technology, she’d adapted it for her own purposes, with a few added functions that would escape even Alfor’s stringent rules about quintessence usage. Right now, the focus of those adaptations was the Scrying app she had been focused on when the lecturer interrupted.

Katie was using it to search for her Mother.

She was, rather obviously to anyone who knew how to look at the world, not a human. She looked like one and talked like one and had all of their strengths and weaknesses. She would have the same lifespan and her biology was almost identical. Almost. In the makeup of her body was one key difference that had separated Arcanes from Humans when the cro-magnons hunted mammoths.

This simple fact and slight adjustment in her biology gave her the ability to harness and control different factors of quintessence. The substance, the pure energy of creation itself, was limited. It never ran out, but no more of it could really be created, and it had to be taken from other sources. Only arcanes had the adjusted physiology required to manipulate and gather it without ill effect (a functioning appendix), which made her entirely different to humans—and, frankly, made them better, though Katie would never reveal that opinion in front of Alfor or her brother.

For just over a decade, she had lived in the Commune of Oriande. One of the oldest houses of arcanes in their history. Some houses, like the Komarians, didn’t have qualms about how they found it, and were more than willing to fight other arcanes and leech it from humans. Some Houses were so inherently aligned to one element that even their moral code refuted the sourcing from any other location, like the Bluvians, who only took their power from bodies of water, and expelled arcanes who developed different affinities. Some chose no house, preferring to live without the constraints of a house, but also vulnerable as arcane societal outcasts; Renegades.

The Oriandeans didn’t discern between different elements, but their method of gathering and using quintessence was what made them one of the more stable houses, having lasted as long as the Komarians. Instead of taking through force as the Komarians did, the Oriandeans collected members, who entrusted their power through their rites to a collective, to be called on by the chief in times of danger, or otherwise divided equally among all members of the House. Or, put another way, like worker drone bees enslaved to a queen.

Katie, as she was still a minor at seventeen, did not have the obligation to commit to the rite, and despite her brother’s attempts to convince her otherwise, wasn’t really keen to take it at all. She probably would, if only because she couldn’t go forever without protection, and she didn’t particularly want to be a Renegade. If there had been a house dedicated to Lifeweavers—those aligned with nature and the connections of quintessence through the other elements—she would have left the oriandean Commune already. Sadly, those of her nature, while advantaged when it came to manipulating quintessence, were few and far between.

If it weren't for the fact that the Komarians, aside from being creepy bastards, had killed her parents when she was seven years old and forced her brother to take shelter with her under Alfor’s generosity, she might have felt a little more aligned to their independent philosophy. Then again, the photograph inside her phone case, acting as the conduit for her scrying spell challenged that ten year old belief, and was exactly why she was more interested in her phone than the ramblings of her computing teacher.

Scrying spells only found dead bodies when you specifically searched for dead bodies. Katie had tried looking for her mother’s grave and failed, but when she tried searching for a living arcane… she’d had more luck, and that warranted further explanation. It also meant the potential wrath of Alfor later, depending on her success, but she was determined to see her quest through.

The crystal charge in the phone was at the best it could be, a nugget of Tiger’s Eye hidden in the bowels of the device; it didn’t require a lot of quintessence, and was self recharging, utilising the energy taken from the electrical current (and her own magic if needed), which was a good thing. It went unnoticed in the Commune, and luckily for her, modern technology did not require a lot of adaptation in order to suit her purposes or work in a magical environment.

The tracking marker blinked on the map, on the other side of the city, and Katie glanced irritably at the clock on the phone screen. She still had ten minutes. Should she wait? She knew if she upped and left the class in the middle of it then her brother would find out, but he’d find out if she didn’t show up for her other classes anyway. 

Anxiously, she waited, watching the timer, before finally the clock hit 13:00 pm, and the ring of the bell announced the end of the class. As soon as she was out in the corridor Katie hiked her bag onto her shoulder and bolted for the door, tuning her earbuds into the bluetooth so that she could listen to the echolocator sounds, a double layer of warning Katie had built into the app, and snuck out of the school into the suburb shopping district.

The mark was showing up on the other side of the city, like it had been on and off all week. She’d been watching it for a while, since she first got the notification the spell had worked, and she was prepared for most of the eventualities tracking it down might bring her; her main problem was getting to it before it disappeared.

Every other time, she’d never been able to get there quick enough on foot or by way of public transport; she’d hoped she would be able to do it, but there was just no way even modern technology held a candle to things like teleportation talismans. It meant she’d have to make use of the one that was purely for returning to the Commune.

Alfor had made it, with strict instructions on its use so that there wasn’t any quintessence waste. He’d know as soon as she used it since it was fuel with his quintessence and people would start wondering where she was when she didn’t show up at the Commune as expected.

But she’d been following and searching for months, since Katie found the photo tucked away in her brother’s room one day, when she was looking for a jumper she’d left in his room, and so far the spell was still in connection for the local radius. 

If she teleported, there would just be another lecture about not dedicating herself properly, not focusing, wasting the collective’s resources. Which was bullcrap—she hadn’t actually taken the affirmation vows and Oriandean baptism yet, so her magic was still hers. Alfor and Allura just acted like by virtue of living in the commune it was theirs by association. 

She still had free reign to use it how she liked, even if it meant setting the process back by a while, and until she actually had to give the matter more serious thought, Katie was going to take full advantage of that.

She _did_ take a moment to try and decide if the drama bound to follow was really worth it, but in the end, Katie pulled the talisman from her pocket. She concentrated on the scrying app’s marker, and willed herself there as she whispered the activation. The school courtyard disintegrated as she walked, morphing into an outline of a dismantled and run down side of Altea. 

Beside her humans walked past without even a care, and Katie looked around at her new location; judging by the age of the buildings, and the condition, she was in Arus. The part of town with metal shop barricades and old grilled windows amid the terraces, and an abundance of takeaways starting to attract locals.

It was a little greyer, a little less pristine than the section of town where the Commune was located; the kind of place that was commonplace to be hidden away by pompous city overlords, but so much more. Katie breathed in residual energy and felt her reserves increasing with little more than a breath. There was so much _life_ here. From the creativity and anger lingering in the graffiti on the bus shelter, the well-trod footsteps on the uneven pavements that had seen better days of maintenance.

Normally a quick trip to the park was enough to take back what she’d used, when Alfor allowed them to leave to recharge, and it was always where she was sent to replenish, but the nooks and crannies of the city were just as fruitful, if not more so; the more something had to work to exist, the more energy it had. Cultivated gardens and pruned parks were pale in comparison to struggle and the strength of the weeds hidden in the wall of the laundrette as she walked past. 

She didn’t have long to search; the beep of the app was thankfully getting louder, but no doubt the confused messages would start piling up, and if she wasn’t fast, someone would be sent to find her after using the talisman and not appearing.

Checking her phone, then the surroundings, Katie turned off down another street into an industrial district. The beeping was more insistent now, and the tiny green triangle on her screen was spinning, excitedly informing her that she was close, occasionally slowing to point her in the direction of her quarry.

The tracker had led her to a construction warehouse, and by the time she arrived, it was around the time when all but the bare bones of the staff had gone home for the day. The sun was setting behind the river, reflection on the river and through the grim, overcast sky starting to roll in from the east. 

She had several messages on her phone from her brother, asking her where she was, if she was staying out late with friends, if she had activated her talisman by accident, but she was ignoring them.

Keeping her self shielded from mortal cameras and eyes—the first spell anyone born into any of the arcane houses learned no matter what their alignment was— she had to make herself a workaround on the fence; glad she’d prepared, she took the pair of wire cutters from her backpack, and snipped through an already worn looking section of the fence. Putting them back in her bag, she looked around for any other signs of activity, slipping a pocket knife into her pocket, and taking out a bottle of sprouts.

She had been watering and maintaining them for the occasion for a few days; soaking the kernels, and hiding them in the dark of her cupboard until they began to sprout. The problem with being in a city was, even if she could still absorb quintessence from her surroundings, using it directly was more limited, and given the vast sprawl of Altea, she needed something she could use for protection if needed. That was where the mixed sprouts came in. 

And the knife, because there was nothing wrong with more direct back-up.

Checking her phone again, Katie bent back the fence where she’d clipped it and crawled through the gap. The shipping containers formed a maze of pathways, and more than once she wished she had a more active or useful type of magic, where she could just blow them out of the way, but eventually, she managed to find her way to the front of the building. It was dark and already, but after rounding the corner, she finally saw signs of life.

Tucking her knife up her sleeve, and taking a hidden handful of her sprouts from the small jar, she peered around the corner of the building. A few people were walking about—mostly men, but a few women; most of the silhouettes disappeared around the corner. There was a thick feeling of quintessence in the air, and she could hear muffled noises from behind the next tower of shipping containers.. Katie opened up her phone, looking at the picture of her mother, then looked back at the group of people.

She couldn’t see anyone that matched the visual description she was looking for, but that was to be expected—no sane arcane would walk around in unknown territory without a glamour after choosing their house. Tucking the teleportation talisman into her back pocket (in case her very stupid but desperate idea failed her), Katie took a breath, and walked out towards the group of people.

Immediately the group tenses, and eyes fell upon her, including those of a man a few years her senior, with dark skin and brown hair in short dreadlocks that was almost certainly a glamour. Her own hummed over her skin, and the man raised an eyebrow at her. She could taste the mixtures of quintessence in the air. There was a twist in the dirt around her feet that wasn’t entirely natural, and a whistle in the air around her ears that was too energised, and a dampness that wasn't just from the rolling river fog in the air.

The man stepped towards her and she tasted dampness in the air as he approached. “I’m not here to be a problem,” she said quickly. “I’m here for help.” 

“Are you now?” the man asked. “And are you looking for it or giving it?”

“Looking,” Katie said, her heart hammering in her throat as the person approached her. His quintessence was like the blast of a wave, the depth of a flood, seeping into the air around her, and she felt certain that maybe, just maybe she had bitten off more than she could chew. It felt like if he snapped his fingers he’d be able to drown her in mid air. The droplets of water swirling— _dancing—_ around his fingers gave her little reason to think otherwise. 

There was a river, but it wasn’t so close that he could make use of the existing body. That means that the Renegade—whoever he might be— was pulling it from the _atmosphere_ , probably interweaving his quintessence with the others to get the most defensive and offensive capability from the surroundings. No run of the mill arcane could manage that and carry a conversation.

Katie had a feeling she’d just done something stupid, but there was no going back now, not before she’d even tried.

“I…” she had to swallow, starting to feel suffocated a little by the pressure. “I just have one question and I can pay for an answer,” she said, catching his eye and slowly taking her bag off her shoulder. He watched her, and she couldn’t help notice the dancing droplets had turned into a ribbon, a swirling vortex that wove through the air from hand to hand around his neck before circling her like a predator.

She did her best to ignore it, and slowly opened up the bag; catching the man’s eye again, she pulled out five basic reliquaries—they were small, but they didn’t need to be large for their value.

Selecting one, she held it up, watching the man’s eyes light up with recognition. “Quintessence, she said. “Concentrated, natured quintessence. I have one of each type if you want to bargain, but not until someone hears me out. If you don’t, consider it my peace offering for not attacking,” she said.

The man stared at her for a while, then glanced over his shoulder at the others, then turned back to her. “You’re either really stupid or really reckless,” he stated. Katie decided not to respond to the comment, but he gave a single hand gesture to the others behind him, and then turned back to her as they wandered away round the corner. The ribbon of water returned to a few droplets that orbited his arms and shoulders. “But you must be pretty desperate,” he snorted. “What’s the question brat?”

Katie let out a breath; okay, so far, so good. “I’m looking for somebody…” she said, opening up her phone case and holding up the photo within it for him to see. “…the woman in this photograph, or anyone who knows where I might be able to find her,” she said.

The man took the photo between two fingers, and gave it a scrutinising look, face blank. “Have a name to go with this?” he asked.

“I don’t know her name,” Katie said. “But I think she’s my mother.”

He turned the curious look to her. “Fine, then what’s _your_ name?”

“How about you give me yours,” Katie said—did he really think she was that stupid? If she gave him her name she exposed herself, took away her ability to glamour in front of him and anyone he could describe her to with it.

The man chuckled. “So you do have a brain,” he said, taking the reliquaries as she handed them over, humming pleasantly as he tucked them inside his coat pocket. “Fine then, no names,” he relented. “But at least give me a face to go by, sweetness; I’ll even show you mine.”

Katie faltered as a receding tide swept across the man before there, revealing shorter, flatter hair, lighter tan skin and a lanky body beneath a dark grey and violet plated uniform. Her heart stopped in her throat at the sight of Komaric regalia.

Shit. Shit. _Shit_.

“Now that’s just rude,” he said with a mocking tone in his voice as she backed away, grabbing her wrist and pulling her back towards him. “Komar doesn’t bless quintessence harvested from kids, so don’t give me that look, I won’t harm a hair on your pretty little head; now, why don’t you let me get a good look at your face, hmm?”

Katie was not convinced; it was true that due to their collective low numbers most Arcanes wouldn’t harm minors no matter their house, but after living in hiding from them for ten years, Katie wasn’t about to trust the word of a Komarian footsoldier

“Let go of me!” she screamed as he dragged her close, his hand going to her back pocket, taking out the teleportation talisman; it was consumed by his element, crumbled and beaten within the billowing sphere until it was fractured and broken, useless. “Let go! Let go, please!” He found her knife before she could even try to stab him with it and tossed it away. “I just—”

“You’re in over your head kid,” the man snarled. “I could taste the stench of the _Commune_ in your sweat the moment you walked round the corner,” he spat, one hand coming up to her neck, fingernails sharp where they scraped at her neck, grabbing her arms before she could wrench herself free with the other. “Now tell me why an Oriandean guttersnipe like you has this picture, and I might just let you go scuttling back to Alfor unscathed.

“I told you!” Katie coughed, looking to the ground where the mixture of sprouts she’s been holding had fallen to the ground. It was muddy. She could work with that. “She’s my mother! Please, let go! I’m seventeen, I’m not an acolyte yet, I swear!”

“Liar,” the man hissed in her ear; she felt blood begin to dribble from one of the cuts from his nails. “Maybe if I leech the blood from you I’ll find out from the taste, hmm? I’m good at tasting lies.”

“I’m not a liar, I swear by the void and stars, I’m not an Acolyte, and as far as I know that woman is my mother!” she coughed. The gong of the vow echoed through her—she could feel her quintessence _binding_ inside her—followed by the echo, which the _Drukk’d_ must have felt.

Turning her around, holding her under the chin—no longer choking but still uncomfortable and disorientating—he slammed her into the metal of one of the shipping containers, peering at her through the dark, scowling even deeper. 

“Sir, is everything alright?” another glamoured figure called out.

The man looked over at the one who’d called his attention. “Go find our _Dru’kasha_ ; tell her I have something here that requires her attention,” he told the underling before looking back at her, his leer spiteful and amused. “A little Oriandean witch who thinks to call her mother.”

The underling paled, looked at them both, and then bolted round the corner. Dimly, Katie could now hear shouts and chanting. She felt sick. That was why she hadn’t seen any of the site workers; it was a quintessence harvesting ritual, and there was a _Dru’kasha_ present. The word wasn’t one of the ritual languages she knew but she’d heard it often enough to know that wasn’t good, and that she probably didn’t want to be her any longer than she had been. In fact, she was certain.

“I’m going to drag your name out of you before my _Dru’kasha_ arrives,” he whispered in her ear; she was stuck, lifted off the ground and she could even get an angle to click him in the balls to make him drop her. She tried and tried, but he wasn’t budging. “And your face; you can either drop it yourself, or I’ll rip it away from you, understand sweetness?”

Katie closed her eyes and concentrated on the seeds, even as she shook her head in refusal. Just a few moments was all she needed. She just needed a burst, and as the last petals of her glamour fell away from her face, she watched something cross his face. Familiarity? Shock? Anger? It was hard to tell, but it was something, and his reaction was an opportunity. She sent a blast of magic towards the seeds on the ground, and—

“I highly recommend you stop your manhandling of the girl, _Lance Serrano_.”

The voice broke through just as the vines began to split and uncurl from their protective shells. The man–Lance? Why did she feel like she knew that name from somewhere? That had to be a bad sign if his name was familiar–turned his head over his shoulder. Alfor stood with a calm gaze directed towards them, and behind him, his face angriest she had seen it in a while was Matt.

Stars and Void, she was in so much trouble.

“Alfor,” the _Drukk’d_ snarled. The venom in his voice made her feel sick. “You’re right, it is a big night. It’s been a long time since we had a _Dru’akar_ of the Fire, but then…” his eyes slid away from Alfor, and his gaze narrowed on her brother, or at least, his glamour. “…you’d know all about that wouldn’t you?”

A bolt of static electricity struck the ground, splattering the mud, and a blast of wind left a single cut on Lance’s cheek.

“Let the child go,” Alfor repeated, his voice harder. “Even Komar scorns the harm of children, is that not true?”

“Oh I won’t harm her,” Lance said, tightening his grip around her, hauling her in front of him like a shield, his sharp nails around her neck angling her head back. She felt something slimy and… was he _licking_ her blood? Ew Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. “But I think I’d rather wait. I’m sure I can handle you until Lady Waterdancer arrives; I can already sense her.” The reverence in his voice almost sounded fanatical with adoration.

“Perhaps, but I’m sure your _Dru’kasha_ would be displeased if you failed to complete your harvest tonight; the ritual is to be unbroken, is it not? I’m not familiar with the amount of quintessence required to initiate a _Dru’akar_ , but I can imagine if you fail tonight, you lady will be most displeased,” Alfor said.

“If you’re harvesting quintessence for an initiation there’s no way the _Dru’kasha_ is going to fight here,” Matt said, his voice higher in pitch thanks to the glamour. “You need five reliquaries for the _Palen-Bol_ , that’s why you’re here isn’t it? For natured quintessence for the ritual.”

Lance tensed.

“Let her go, and everyone gets to keep their plans intact,” Alfor insisted. “I’m not here to be a thorn in your side Lance; I’m just here to pick up a lost child. Isn’t that fair?”

For a long moment, nothing happened, then Lance dropped her, the drop in his hold shoving her into the mud. Mockingly, he held out her mother’s photograph. Before he could change his mind, she snatched it, and the rest of her scattered things, and bolted towards Matt, who firmly wrapped his arms around her as soon as she was in range.

“You’re okay,” he whispered, his arms tight and warm around her shoulders, like a protective barrier. “You’re okay, they won’t touch you again.” Katie shuddered and leaned into the embrace. She was going to get her ear chewed off later, but right now she was just glad someone had been able to pull her out of this mess.

“Until next time _Drukk’d_ ,” Alfor nodded to Lance; he put a hand on their shoulders, and with another crack of lightning they disappeared from the muddied shipping yard, leaving only the smell of petrichor and ozone in their wake.

  
~•✮❖✮•~  
  


“Keith?”

The sound of his sister’s voice echoed through the hallway as he made his way back to his rooms, and Keith looked up from his seat on the floor, watching as she ran through the hall, the black heels of her glamour clicking on the stone of the floor. Even with the stilettos, he would have had a few inches over her, but she met him in the eye as she approached the window seat he’d collapsed into an hour before. 

The light was dim from the fireplace in their shared living quarters, but Keith could see the line of worry on her face through the fading evening and dying blue flames beneath the mantlepiece.

“Hey,” he greeted, exhausted from his own venture past the barrier, watching as her glamour of a blonde woman cracked and burned away under her blue flames, her _Dru’kasha’s_ robes flaring with each step around her thighs, the lilac stripes of rank emblazoned on the breast of the tunic. “Any… Any luck?”

Acxa smirked, leaning in close to press her forehead to his, leaning into his palm as he pleaded with each gasp, caressing the skin of her cheek. The curl in her lips was one that she only wore with success. She opened the palm of her hand, and there unfurled a gentle, tamed, bright icy blue flame. “This should sort you out until you can get a full top up. I swear, Oriandeans don’t know what they’ve got until they lose it. Idiot was almost on par with _you_ , and they were all ready to hand themselves over,” she snorted, watching as he passed a palm over the flame, the tiny ball of magic that would replenish his own.

“Almost?”

“As if anyone besides Lotor could keep up with you,” Acxa snorted, her eyes sparkling as he sent out a thread of flame from his fingers, dancing orange tainting the blue fire and making it their own, snatching and consuming it. Almost immediately, his core felt flooded and rejuvenated. “Try to think about your reserves a little more, will you?” she snorted, releasing the last of the quintessence. “Ulaz is right about you being reckless; I don’t want to deal with you going human on me because we can’t find enough quintessence for you next time.”

“It’s a good thing we’re the only Firestarters left here then, isn’t it?” he shot back. “No competition,” he breathed, enjoying the feeling of being back at peak condition as the quintessence flowed through him. “By the void, I needed that.”

“So?” Acxa asked, crossing her arms around his neck and giving him an expectant look. “Are you going to tell me how you ended up so drained in the first place? You went out to _harvest_ . How in the name of Komar did you come back with _less_ quintessence than what you left with?”

Keith scowled, his own arms reaching out for the only person who’d ever been present—with who he’d never been able to —and looked out of the glass over the temple gardens, watching the _Dru’zan_ , _Drukk’d,_ and senior members of the covenant passing through the courtyard in the night. “ _Oriandeans_ ,” he spat. “They know we’re running on fumes, so they’re interfering.”

Acxa’s silence was composed, but her fingers gripped the sleeve of his leather jacket tightly, and he felt the disturbing churn of her quintessence as though it were his own. “Do the other Priests know?” she asked, her voice tense.

“Some do, it’s been happening for a while,” he said. “I wanted to wait until I went down to the reliquary rooms, but you found me first; I probably should talk to Lady Windsinger about it now though.” 

Keith didn’t miss the way his sister tensed in his arms at the mention of their Aunt; her reluctance and dislike of her was nothing new, but it made things so awkward sometimes “Acxa,” he reprimanded, hooking a finger under her chin, tilting her face up towards him; the icy chill of her quintessence cast a pallor on her displeasure that sharpened it from charming to exquisite. “Be nice,” he urged her, rubbing his thumb over her lip. “Until someone finds suitable candidates for the last _Dru’kasha_ , she’s in charge, and now—”

“Alfor,” Acxa spat, the dismay and fear on her face thrumming in his veins as her unease turned the air cold. “Lance said he showed up at his harvest for the _Palen-Bol_ ,” she said, shaking just speaking the name. It was with good reason, but the splinters of ice on the windows were an alarm to him. 

“Shh, it’s okay, he won’t find us,” Keith promised her, fixing a stray lock of hair, tucking it behind her ear and tracing its curve. Sensation was always the best way to help her regain her calm. “Not without his spy, and he’s not going anywhere. I’m surprised he showed up at a Waterdancer harvest, but he has been bothering the other teams lately, so it’s only a matter of time before he makes a nuisance of himself again. We need to be prepared,” he assured her, waiting till he felt the relaxation in the air around them before taking her back into his arms, warming them both with the magic that he’d stolen from her in their mother’s belly.

As the air warmed, and the icy cracks on the window melted away, he felt her calm, settled against his shoulder, but there was hesitation in the room, and he waited for her questions. 

“How long are you back for?”

“Not sure yet; depends where I’m needed next, but it would be rude to miss my own initiation, so not till after the ceremony,” he shrugged, curling a lock of her hair around his finger, kissing the top of her head again, admiring the sheen of the deep blue, the lustre. “I’ll come see you when I can, same as always,” he promised.

Acxa again said nothing, but he could feel the unspoken irritation and disappointment in her wordless voice, the core of her being. It had always been so easy to understand his sister, and never more so than when they were close. Wherever he went, he could feel it—the reminder that they were two parts of a whole, their matching quintessence. He knew she was unhappy with the declaration, but it was what it was. 

He didn’t like leaving the temple much nowadays either, but if they were to have any chance of maintaining themselves, then he had to go out to harvest like all the other priests. Leading the teams would make it easier, but it was getting harder and harder to find quintessence in mortals without a full circle of _Dru’kasha_.

Without that link to Komar, to the embodiment of creation and quintessence itself, it was impossible to know where to look, and they were forced to spy on the Oriandean charlatans attempting to gather the energy before they could track it down with the ancient rites. 

Maybe if their mother had lived, things would have been different, but as it was, Acxa was the only person he could ever trust, and never lie to. His sister huffed, and leaned into his shoulder. “Just be more careful,” she sighed. “You scared me this time,” she huffed. “Can we go to bed now? I’m tired from chasing up _your_ midnight snack.”

Keith noted the quick change of the subject, but decided to let it lie, and scooped her up, getting to his feet and heading through to his room. He and Acxa, even when they were separated by the barrier of the temple, lived in each other’s pockets, and once he’d dropped her on the duvet, he went to his drawers and threw a set of pyjamas at her, which she divested herself into without much concern.

Keith stripped off his own battered and beaten uniform, scowling at the scorches on the breastplate. The Firestarter had managed to get a few hits on him before he had consumed enough quintessence from her to escape back to the temple. He’d have to go down to the forgeries and have it fixed, or maybe it was time to just get a new one. He knew he’d have new casuals and formals produced after the ceremony. Was it even worth worrying over until it was over?

He decided probably not, and went into the bathroom to shower, and change into a clean set of boxers and pyjama trousers. When he came out, towelling the water out of his hair, he could taste the pensive energy emanating from his sister.

Acxa looked over, watching him as he slid under the covers beside her, exhausted from the journey and fight with the Oriandeans, and she navigated herself into his arms once he’d settled. “What is it?” he asked, stoking her hair. There’s something else,” he guessed, starting to feel the lull of rest from the comfort and familiarity of Acxa’s quintessence. It was humming beneath her skin, awake and alive after her venture beyond the boundaries of the temple walls.

“You didn’t… you didn’t see Matt, did you?”

It was Keith’s turn to stiffen, and he leaned back, both confused and irritated. “Why do you want to talk about him?”

“Lance thought he’d seen him with Alfor,” Acxa said, her tone cautious. “I was just… worried; I hadn’t heard his name for so long, and I hadn’t seen you so…”

Keith let out a breath of relief, pulling her close. “I’m fine. He’d never be able to touch me; Oriandeans wouldn’t suffer a Komarian in their walls unless he _gave_ them something first,” he spat. “He’s no threat, not directly at least.”

Acxa’s shoulders sagged under his arm. “So, you really haven’t seen him?” she asked.

Keith leaned back on his pillow, and arm behind his head as he contemplated the best response to the question, letting all the emotions borne from the single name sit, before, tilting Acxa’s chin towards him, and kissing her. “Oh sweet baby sister, if I had, or ever do see that traitor again, I’d make you a gift of his head,” he said, the words whispered over her lips before he wrapped his arms around her again. 

They settled into the night, the sound of the rain on the glass panes of the windows a soothing staccato to the lingering disquiet. His quintessence was churning but as long as Keith laid there, his sister'a comforting presence beside him, he couldn’t tell if its upheaval was from the new energy being amalgamated into his own, or the name of the man who had cursed their future to what they lived in now.

  
~•✮❖✮•~  
  


The splatter of rain against the window was not as therapeutic as it might have been against the walls of her home.

Katie sat on her bed in her room, warm flannel pyjamas on her skin instead of the mud soaked jeans and jacket she’d been wearing, waiting irritably for someone to come and start lecturing her, which, in hindsight would be completely deserved. She’d skived off from school and wandered out alone, with barely any idea of what she was walking into, ‘ _wasted_ ’ her magic on a spell that had put her in danger, and neglected to even inform anyone where she was going or why.

Then she’d gone and walked up to an assembly of _freaking Druids_ in the middle of a ritual.

Stupid, stupid stupid! Really, she was lucky Matt was so overprotective that after his seventeen missed messages and five missed calls, he’d gone directly to Alfor to ask him to find her. The plush Hippo in her arms—who had for many years been known as Baebae—was a little love worn around the edges, and she toyed with one of the free threads as she looked at the picture of her mother.

At least, she had thought it was her mother; now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe she’d been wrong. Matt had always been so cagey about their parents that she hadn’t thought he’d give her any answers. She’d thought he was still hurt from seeing them pass, so had thought it best not to ask anything when she found the photograph. 

Stars, she hadn’t even expected the scrying spell to actually work! She’d actually been trying to test the functionality against someone she had thought was genuinely dead to see if it could locate grave markers, but it had kept showing up in different places, and last she remembered graves couldn’t walk twenty mile distances in the space of a few minutes.

She’d been sure though. The same jaw line in the woman formed her own face in the mirror whenever she looked at it, and she had the same thin-sculpted figure puberty had deemed her fit for. Even Matt, who was taller, and broader in the shoulders, had the same lithe bone structure, the same eyes and nose. She didn’t know who else it could be and worse, she didn’t know why the picture could have made a _Komarian_ so enraged.

She was still staring at the picture, Bae-bae squashed up between her knees and her chest when she heard the door click open, and the sound of Matt’s footsteps on the floorboards. Then the door closed behind him.

“What in the name of stars and void were you thinking?” he asked, sounding tired, angry. “Do you have any idea how absolutely irresponsible you were today?”

“It was an accident! I just wanted to… I wasn’t expecting to run into Druids!”

“And that makes everything alright?” Matt asked; his face was contorted with anger, and Katie bit her lip. “That’s supposed to justify skipping school, using a teleportation talisman—that’s for emergencies only outside of coming home—to sneak out? I’m almost scared to ask what you were doing there Katie, especially with these!” Some of the empty or spare reliquaries she’d stashed away in her bag landed on the duvet. “Do I even want to know what you got raw quintessence from?”

“Matt! I made them ages ago for casting practice—they’re self replenishing!” Flinching at the insinuation that she’d bought them, or worse, stolen them or something else stung. “You watched me! It was just as a precaution—”

“A precaution? You’ve been _planning_ this?” Matt’s tone was horrified and incredulous, and that had definitely been the wrong thing to say. “You don’t even realise how foolish you’ve been, do you?”

Matt’s anger was justified. Katie knew she would get into trouble, and after how terribly things had gone wrong, she knew it was right. That said, it was still hard to hear. “I wasn’t trying to…” she didn’t know what to say. “…I’m sorry.”

Matt gave a long sigh, running a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry too,” he said. “I know you wouldn’t have willingly walked into something like that, but things like this are exactly why you have that talisman in the first place, Katie. I just don’t understand how you even ended up in that mess…” he said, sitting down beside her, “…you scared me.”

Katie knew that too. She’d seen it on his face in the shipping yard when he and Alfor appeared, even behind a glamour. In how tightly he’d grabbed hold of her as soon of her as soon as the druid had caved under Alfor’s threats, and let her go. “I-I’m sorry…” she said, voice cracking.

Matt’s face crumbled and he pulled her into an embrace, and she cried. “I didn’t mean to,” she said, clinging to him. “I just wanted to find out if the scrying spell was right. I tried to be careful Matt but he broke the talisman and…” 

Matt’s arms wound around her, and the tension crumpled. “Oh Katie, I know you didn’t,” he sighed. “Were lucky he did break it; that was how Alfor knew where to find you,” he said, his tone a little wry. “Hey, come on, I’m not that mad, I promise. I’m just glad you’re not hurt,” he said trying to reassure her. “That said, I still want an explanation. What were you doing there in the first place?”

Katie couldn’t help wondering if it was even with it to bring up the picture. The _drukk’d’s_ reaction was still fresh in her mind; he’d been angry, uneasy almost after she’d shown him the picture of her mother. Until then, everything had been tense, but not alarming. Or maybe she was just naïve about the whole thing. Still, she couldn’t help feeling uneasy and bitter. It wasn’t fair to take that out on Matt, no matter how much she wanted answers. Better to do it when she wasn’t so riled up

“Fine, you don’t want to tell me,” he sighed again, disappointment whispering through the sound. “Regardless, this has to stop Katie; you can’t just go off by yourself like this anymore, for your own good if nothing else.” Katie looked out of the window, waiting to hear the rest of the punishment. “From now until the holidays, Romelle is going to be taking you to and from school until I feel like we can trust you by yourself again; once you go on break, you’ll be staying in the Commune to work on your studies for the Rite of Javeeno.”

Katie closed her eyes. “So, the fact that I don’t _want_ to take the rite in the first place is irrelevant? Or is forcing me into a lifetime of servitude to Alfor part of the punishment?” she could help spitting out.

Matt’s expression became tired, exasperated. “Katie, it’s not the end of the world! Joining the Commune is safer than staying unavowed to a house when you turn eighteen!” he insisted. “Nobody’s asking you to become a shaman, but if you don’t then at least take the protection for what it is, what happened tonight won’t happen again! Komarians might not harm unavowed children, but the moment you hit that majority, they don’t care! Any quintessence is fair game after that! I don’t understand why you’re so against something that won’t harm you and is just going to be for your own good! Please, think about it logically!”

Because it meant signing away everything that made her her own person—her magic, her power, her quintessence, her being—to Alfor, for him to use at any time he wanted.

“From who, Matt? Up till today I’d never met a single Komarian, and it’s not the first time I’ve done a ritual by myself! You’re convinced we’re in danger all the time but you never explain who from, or why! From Komarians? Renegades?” she snapped. “Or our own mother?”

“Katie, what are you talking about?” he asked, the scolding voice gone and replaced by confusion. He stared at her, reaching out a hand. She flinched as it settled on her shoulder. “What does mum have to do with any of this?” he asked.

“You tell me.” Katie said, trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice as she handed over the picture. 

Matt took the crumpled photograph, looked at it, then closed his eyes. The reaction stung, because it told her that what she had thought—hoped—was just her own imagination, or a fluke, was true after all; her mother was _alive_.

“You told me our parents were dead,” she hissed, gripping Baebae more tightly than his seams were probably made for. “All this time, you told me, and I didn’t ask any questions because I thought it was too hard for you to talk about…”

“Katie—”

“I thought it was a fluke the first time I used it to practice my scrying…” she said, bending the truth slightly.

She loved her brother, but her phone was her one source of magic completely free from interference or supervision, and she knew as soon as he found out about it, Alfor would have it taken away for not being traditional enough or some other bullshit. If she told Matt… he’d go straight to Alfor, and she couldn’t lose that little thread independent of the Commune’s rules.

“…but dead people don’t show up in a scrying spell unless you’re looking for a graveyard; I’ve been checking for over a month. I tried looking for gravesites; I thought I was wrong, that I’d mixed up the spell, but you never want to talk about them. So I figured I’d find out for myself. maybe if I’d known I’d be heading out to a nest of druids, I’d have thought twice. That’s what I was thinking Matt…” His face was at contrite when she looked towards him. “…That for years, you’ve been _lying_ to me.”

Matt let out a long breath, silent in guilt for a moment, dropping his hand from her shoulder. “Katie, whatever that _drukk’d_ told you—”

‘ _Go find our Dru’kasha. Tell her I have something here that requires her_ _  
_ _attention; a little Oriandean witch who thinks to call her mother._ ’

“—so it’s true?” Katie could feel the break in her voice again; he wasn’t even _denying_ it. “She’s a druk… a Komarian?”

Matt let out a long sigh. “Dru’kasha,” he said, the strange word falling from his tongue with all the hurt of a wistful fantasy gone wrong. “The equivalent of an Oriandean shaman. Sort of She is… was, a Waterdancer. I didn’t… I didn’t really know what to tell you; I was scared, you were seven, and telling you they were dead just… hurt less. I didn’t plan to hide it forever but… the longer I didn’t the more I convinced myself that it was better if you didn’t know what she was. That you’d be... safer. Happier.”

Katie turned, listening, looking for any more dishonesty in Matt’s voice, but she didn’t hear any. Just raw hurt and the relief of a pilling secret kept too long, and past memory. She was still angry, and hurt that Matt had kept such a huge part of her life away from her, lied about it. She understood, but she was allowed to be angry about it.

“Why… did she hate us?” she asked. “Is that why…?”

Matt looked up after processing the question, then shook his head. “No, at least… not the way you’re thinking. I promise, I will tell you everything, soon, but let’s leave that for another night, okay?” he pleaded. “If I’m exhausted, then you must be shattered.”

Katie frowned—he was avoiding the subject, _again_ —but acquiesced; she wasn’t surprised. She’d really pushed her luck today, and considered herself lucky she was talking to Matt, not Alfor. “Get some rest, okay? Do you have your potion?”

Katie nodded, pulling one of the vials from the holder she kept in her bedside cabinet. The milky, icy, pale blue liquid was the thickness of a syrup on her tongue as she swallowed it. Matt smiled, kissing her forehead before getting up to leave.

“Matt?” she asked, something else popping to mind.

“Yes?”

“I don’t understand why that druid let me go... he was talking about something…” she chanced. “A _Dru’akar_? You and Alfor were talking about it too, but I’ve never heard that word before” she asked; for all the studying and magical teaching she’s had, the term was strange. Like something hovering on the tip of her tongue, familiar but forgotten. “Alfor looked worried when that Druid started talking about it,” she added.

“I guess we don’t exactly use the ritual tongue here,” Matt frowned, and bit his lip. “A _Dru’akar_ is… almost like a _Dru’kasha_ , but not quite. If the _Dru’kasha_ are the guides and creators of the Kormaric rituals, their rites then the Dru’akar are the… force. They form a pair with the _Dru’kasha_ matched to their element in the more important rituals,” he explained. “Without a full circle of both _Dru’kasha_ and _Dru’akar_ , then most rituals are hindered, and initiating one is… difficult. _Palen-Bol_ always are no exception, the ones for _Dru’akar_ especially, but they can be done without a full cast.”

“ _Palen-Bol_? That’s the ritual Alfor was talking about?” Katie checked, wanting to be sure she was following. This was more than she had ever learned about the Komaric houses already, and she didn’t think Matt would feel so talkative next time it came up. Now that she knew her own brother—presumably—knew far more in detail about the rituals if their mother had been one of their shamans, there was no way she was passing the chance up. “Because… it takes a lot of quintessence?”

“Partly—it needs a lot of natured quintessence,” Matt said; no wonder the druid had been so quick to take up her bargaining. Free quintessence and his own suspicions about her being an Oriandean satisfied. And she’d fallen for it like an idiot, hook, line and sinker. “But it’s… a long, painful ceremony. It forces the sucker on the altar to convert all the quintessence forced into them into their own nature, consume it. If the bastard doesn’t go insane, or die trying, then woe be to us, because a Komaric Fire arcane of Ke— of that level…” The worry in Matt's voice was so thick she could almost taste it in the once again heavy mood in the room. “…well, let's just hope the ceremony kills him. If the Komarians are initiating a new one then… that’s worrying, but it did put a priority on the harvest over you, so I am grateful for that.”

His smile was rueful, and Katie couldn’t help biting her lip; Alfor had passed up the chance to intervene to keep her safe? Guilt began to sink in again.

“It wasn’t your fault, we didn't even know about it until the druid mentioned it. I guess in that regard, we owe you.” Katie snapped her head up, back to her brother in surprise, and he gave her a two fingered wave from the door. “Sleep tight sis.”

He closed the door behind him; the high level protection charms on the doorframe glowed as they always did, and Katie flopped back onto her bed, looking u p at the glow in the dark stars on her ceiling, mapped into the constellations from when she had been learning her basic astronomy. Closing her eyes, she went over all of what had just revealed to her, and what he hadn’t.

She could kind of understand why Matt hadn’t wanted to tell her their mother was a Komaric Shaman. Shamaness? Dru’...aksha? _Dru’kasha_. She tested the word on her tongue a few times before rolling onto her side. Whatever the word was, did it even matter? Knowing her own mother was the reason she and her brother had been hiding under Alfor’s protection for the past decade… that hurt.

She’d hoped she might be able to get answers from her mother after she had tried the tracking spell, but probably not in the way she was thinking.

Kati frowned then, and picked up her phone, opening up the app and picking up the discarded photograph. A scene of the blonde haired woman in a plain, blue blouse and bootcut jeans, smiling at the camera with one arm around a younger Matt’s shoulder, and Katie’s own younger self in her other arm, perched on her hip.

She bit her lip, trying to reason with herself, then she sighed and charged the spell again. Once again, it latched onto a location. Matt had said he didn’t know if she were alive or dead, but the tracking spell had worked. She was sure of it. Scrying was hardly necromancy, especially by cutting out all the circle-drawing by coding that monotonous task into her phone.

Not to mention the druid. _Lance_ , Alfor had called him.

‘ _Go find our Dru’kasha. Tell her I have something here that requires her_ _  
_ _attention; a little Oriandean witch who thinks to call her mother._ ’

He hadn’t reacted so violently until he’d seen her mother’s picture, and his face had been strange after her glamour dropped, when she was trying to distract him. His whole demeanour had changed and he’d sounded like he planned to fetch a _Dru’kasha_ directly. Hadn’t he called her a Waterdancer when he was talking to Alfor too?

Matt said he thought their mother was dead, but tracking spells didn’t track dead bodies, and the druid’s reaction had been too strong to be coincidence.

Katie looked back at her photo and her phone, then let out a huff of frustration and dumped them both on the cabinet face down; Matt was right. She was exhausted. She’d taken in a lot of information, had her _blood_ _licked_ by a creepy druid—something no shower could ever remove from her memory—and needed sleep. 

Matt would tell her everything when he was ready. If she started thinking up conspiracy theories because of something a druid had said, she’d probably only end up driving herself crazy.

Looking to the crystal glowing on her bedside table, she gently blew the magical glow away, then curled up under the covers, Baebae still in her arms; ritual drums thudded in a repetitive beat somewhere in the compound, echoing so distantly and so closely in her ears it was as though she was right there beside them, and the sound lulled her.

With a calmer heart, but many more questions, she went to sleep with hopes of a better day ahead.

* * *

This was born from watching too many episodes of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and a trip down memory lane watching Charmed videos on YouTube. ~~Yes, I'm aware my age is showing, but Cole and Phoebe deserved better damn it.~~

I don't plan for this to be as dark as the Love Somebody AU is, but... there are tag warnings for a reason. They will be updated as and when. No trigger warnings or TL;DRs should be necessary but I'll give warning if need be.

I don't know how fast updates will be but I'd be lying if I said this fic is wasn't new distraction from my other WIPs. Its the world building—It hooks me every time. There is also a [Spotify ❤︎](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5bBTmS2eBYtl8JzvqNgvrk?si=r7y4ho1DT02GkhsP1yQfag) if you're interested.

Hope you've enjoyed the first chapter!


	2. In Your Eyes

“How is she?”

Matt looked at Romelle in the central living space where she was sitting with Hira, and a few of the Acolytes. Concern was on her face, and he sat down beside her, leaning into the arm she offered. “Tired,” he said. “Still a bit shaken, but I can’t blame her. It’s not like she’s had much interaction with the Order, and she definitely wasn’t looking to find them,” he said.

“I presume given your calm, she made no connections to her heritage?” Hira asked, looking over her glasses from her book, her green Shaman’s marks a contrast to blue eyes and rich berry-coloured hair (the result of one too many potions gone wrong as an acolyte, or so she claimed).

“Not from meeting the  _ Drukk’d _ , but… she knows our mother is a  _ Dru’kasha _ ” Matt said looking up at the ceiling, exhausted after the day of upheaval that has started with Alfor’s warning that Katie’s talisman had been destroyed

“What?” Hira looked up from her book, putting it aside sharply. “How?” Hira asked, a frown of confusion forming thin lines on her forehead.

“She found a picture of mum—the one I normally keep in my wallet,” he explained. “And yes, I realise that keeping the picture was stupid,” he added quickly, watching the scowl on the Shaman’s face. “–but whatever she is, she’s our  _ mother _ , Hira. I wanted to keep at least one, especially for when Katie finds out the whole truth, which  _ you _ told me would have to happen someday.”

He didn’t need to be reminded of how he’d been the one to put Katie in this situation; he’d been more than aware of that or years, but what was he supposed to do? Lose all empathy and nostalgia from the kind woman who’d raised him through his childhood? What he’d told his sister was no lie; their mother had never hurt or harmed them, or hated them. She, specifically, was not what they had fled from.

“Babe, no-one’s criticising you for that,” Romelle said, glaring at Hira as she squeezed his hand. “Besides, that picture gives us a way to keep track of at least one High Priestess.” Hira sniffed but relented even in her disapproval, crossing her arms and leaning back in her seat. “So… what happened? Katie found the picture and… used it to scry with?”

Matt leaned into Romelle’s shoulder, trying to will the stress of the day away with her comforting presence. “She said that she tried to find her grave, but when it didn’t work she tried just searching for her, got curious, and guess where it led her.”

“Did she see her?” Hira checked.

Matt shook his head. “If mum had seen her, I doubt either of us would be here.”

Allura, looking over at the conversation with interest, but a much more veiled opinion than her aunt, frowned. “But dad was with you wasn’t he? He would’ve been more than a match—”

“Allura, with all due respect you’ve never met a High Priestess, and you’ve never met my mother,” Matt told her. “She’s dangerous because she’s driven.” Just like Katie. She really was the perfect mix of both their parents, and becoming a teenager had only made that more obvious as the years went on. “She had a horde of Druids with her and she wouldn’t have hesitated in telling all of them to sacrifice themselves to bring Katie back. They would have done it too, without a qualm, regardless of the  _ Palen-Bol _ , if she had known.” Allura's face faltered when she looked to Romelle and her aunt for back up and the women both shook their heads. “Alfor bluffed his entire way through the conversation. We’re lucky it was just one Druid who saw her, but now…”

He couldn’t imagine Lance keeping quiet. He hadn’t grown up with the guy in the temple—he was a pleasant new addition to the rank of the Waterdancers—but he’d heard stories from Rachael and Marco when they joined the commune about their brother. Having heard about his abilities from Blaytz too (not to mention the guy’s reverence for  _ his  _ mother), Matt was all but certain that the exposure had brought the danger he’d feared for all of his sister’s life straight to their doorstep.

All because of one photo he hadn’t been able to get rid of, mourning for the family that had once been warm and whole, and Katie’s independent and insatiable curiosity.

“...They’ll be looking for her,” a new voice finished. “Matt’s right, Allura; a single  _ Dru’kasha _ or  _ Dru’akar _ can command as much power as half the collective. Colleen has been the Cult’s head Waterdancer since I took over from Chief Trayling, and Matt is understating what his mother is capable of by a great deal. We’re lucky Katie’s talisman was broken and we were alerted at all.”

“Dad!”

Matt looked behind the sofa at Alfor; he stood, leaning wearily against the doorframe. “What worries me more is the news Lance gave us about the new High Priest.” Matt felt the Commune leader’s eyes on him, and knew his hopes of an early night were dashed. “They aren’t a common occurrence, if memory serves me correctly, especially not for those of Fire. Do you have any idea on who we might be dealing with, Matthew?”

Alfor sat down on the sofa beside his sister, watching Matt expectantly, and Matt closed his eyes.. “I don’t have to guess,” he said. “Even if any new Firestarters have been born in the temple, there’s only one person left.” 

“Krolia’s child,” Alfor guessed. “Keith.”

Matt nodded. “Even if there are new Firestarters, unless there’s an older convert I don’t know about, they would be too young to have gone through the prior trials. It  _ has _ to be him.”

“My boy, that is not what I wanted you to say,” Alfor sighed. “I assume despite a miraculous twin conception, the usual Komaric magic was applied during their birth?” Matt nodded. Alfor made a face and chewed the end of a thumbnail. “That is also not what I wanted to hear.” 

“Dad, what are you talking about?” Allura asked. “Why are you talking about birth rituals? What are those? What are  _ Dru’akar _ ? I don’t remember those from our lessons.”

Alfor looked at his daughter, perhaps deciding if she was old or wise enough to hear the conversation in full. “When Komarian children are conceived, the healers perform spells at each stage of the pregnancy to help strengthen the child’s quintessence; upon birth they also imbue all but the minimum of their mother’s quintessence into the child as they are born,” he explained. “In the case of twins, the first born usually consumes the lion’s share in all instances.”

“That’s… that’s barbaric!” Allura paled. “What about…”

“Babies are blank canvases when it comes to quintessence; it doesn’t hurt them,” Matt assured her, making a mental note not to bring up Komaric breeding rituals around Alfor’s daughter; something told him knowing he and Katie were products of three generation of selective breeding might make her a bit green. “Katie howled and screamed when she was born, but that was more for being tiny and naked in a draughty sanctum instead of a nice warm healing hall. Even the Cult isn’t  _ that  _ despicable. Mostly because Komar forbids it, but still.”

“Bear in mind, Allura, that the person we’re discussing is already a child of a former High Priestess,” Hira added, continuing the lesson on Cult culture and rituals. “The same man who nearly killed Romelle a few days ago.”

Allura’s eyes widened, and she looked towards the Firedancer curled up beside him. “You said he nearly drained you of all your quintessence!”

“If he hadn’t been out harvesting, he could have killed me. He was already weakened, and that’s the only reason I got away with just losing some quintessence,” Romelle shivered, and looked at him. “You might as well explain the rankings, babe,” she said, patting his shoulder.

Matt sighed, and looked at Allura, who had an expectant look on her face, then her father who nodded—‘ _ She’ll have to learn all this one day, might as well start now. _ ’ “What do you remember from your lessons with Hira and Gyrgan, Allura?” he asked. 

“The  _ Cult _ —” she started, confidently, emphasising the word in a manner that automatically made Matt feel like grinding his teeth. “—is a group that believes in dominance, the right of anyone able to take it. They don’t believe in preservation, and will openly attack or challenge other arcanes for power; this is an attitude that’s furthered by their belief that quintessence is an omnipotent, who they call Komar. They’re led by the equivalent of Chief Shamans.”

Hira had a constipated look on her face, and Matt could  _ feel _ her frustration. Clearly, Allura’s lessons on other house practices hadn’t been going well.

“Wrong,” Matt said; the scowl on Allura’s face was notable, and he kind of understood why Katie disliked the girl so much. Even if Katie hadn’t known about their mother before today, Allura was one of those people who was  _ far _ too used to being right to take correction well. Especially not by a Komarian who might know the practices better than she did. “Dominance is not the founding value of the Komaric Order; its  _ individualism _ ,” he told her, plainly. “Komarians place value in the importance of the individual as an individual, just like the Ryginarthians did, or the Yendailians do; the difference is that they respect the flow of elemental interaction, like Oriande does.”

Allura looked a little sick at the thought that the house she despised so much could have any similarities to her own, but she’d earned her Shaman’s marks, and Alfor had more or less given him permission to educate her. Matt wondered if he was hoping  _ his  _ lesson might be more effective than Hira’s in cutting through some of acerbity in her.

“You’re right that they will attack other arcanes for quintessence, but it’s not so much for ‘ _ power _ ’ rather than community sustainability. The Yendailians have the same problem in maintaining the quintessence their tribe needs to function, they just haven’t taken the step into collecting from whatever crosses them.”

“If it’s just for community stability, then why don’t they just use collection rituals then?” Allura demanded. 

“Because of Oriande,” Matt said, again bluntly, taking a bottle of nunvill from Gyrgan as he came around with a crate for the adults in the room.

“What?!”

“Because of Oriande,” Matt repeated. “The Commune placed a curse on the Order several hundred years ago—the account is in the Chief Shaman’s accounts, and the Komaric Histories, so if you don’t believe me you can go look it up. Oriande objected to the Komarian view of mortals, as well as a couple of fights they had with other arcanes. The curse they attacked the Komaric Order with was supposed to kill us, but instead, it altered the generation’s ability to absorb unnatured quintessence, and it’s something that’s been bred into born members over time. It’s why despite having to take quintessence from wherever it can be found, the Order still cooperates with different natures, and through group councils, and why we’re biologically incompatible with the majority of Oriandean practices. They have to work together to overcome that, but can’t do it the way Oriande does, by sharing unnatured quintessence through a Chief, because the part of biology that other houses have which allows that doesn’t exist anymore.”

“That’s just an excuse,” Allura protested. “It must be!”

“No Allura,” her father said, his eyes attentively watching her reaction. “The Order’s nature today is partly due to our own different practices taking precedent, and the Komarians have never forgotten that. You’d do well to learn some of our mistakes. Oriande is not perfect, and the Cult is a mountain of our own making.”

“But Y- They treat mortals like animals!”

Matt raised an eyebrow at her; she had the decency at least to look contrite. “What, are you telling me you  _ don’t _ think you’re better than them? More evolved?” he asked. Allura looked stuck. “Treating them like pets isn’t much different Allura, and aren’t you taking advantage of them too, when you and your father visit their wind farms to recharge? The Order has a quintessence problem, so why wouldn’t they see them as an expendable resource when they’re so prolific?” Allura bit her lip. “As for Komar and the rankings,” He continued. “Komar is a term, it’s not really a god or deity with a face as much as quintessence itself, though I suppose there is a leaning towards some omniessence in its governance over arcanes,” he corrected. “It’s still not really the focus as the guide. The Order’s reverence for the acceptance of their own connection to that force as arcanes, to what separates us from mortals; the ranking terms reflect that, and the benefits of the trials taken to become more attuned to it.”

“Benefits—those are the  _ Palen-Bol _ rewards, right?” Gyrgan checked. Matt nodded. Allura was still horrified and fascinated, so Matt continued; with any luck it would keep her from throwing hands with Katie again for a while. He didn’t think he could listen to another ramble, and Allura honestly needed the call out.

“Those who haven’t undergone the trials are usually children, or just those who aren’t ready for them, and are the same as an Initiate; by completing the trial, the force of the ritual usually gives the Initiate greater control over their element, more select talents with it, and each attempt at the ritual comes with new talents. The first  _ Drukk’d _ are those who’ve completed their first trial. Those are the most prolific members, and most Komarians go through the ritual once. They’re what you’d call Shamans. Then the  _ Dru’zan _ and  _ Dru’zae; _ a second trial means a closer affinity with quintessence, with  _ Komar _ , the possibility of becoming a ritual leader is in the candidate’s future, so the terms are separated for men and women on preference. It’s also where the gifts become… conditional, and where the omniessence comes into play. A lot of higher ranked arcanes believe that the trials come with tasks guided by their strengthened connection to Komar, ones that the completion of will benefit the Order. There aren’t really any corresponding ranks in Oriande, and abilities vary but they’re generally more comparable to older Shamans.”

Allura absorbed that, then she stared at him. “Wait, isn’t that what  _ you _ were? When you and Katie arrived?” she asked. “But you were sixteen!”

Matt sipped his bottle of nunvill and winked at her. She looked a little unnerved. “What can I say, I was talented, once upon a time,” he shrugged. “Don’t worry, I’ve been declawed,” he grinned, making a cat gesture with one hand; Allura did not look reassured, and Romelle elbowed him in the side—‘ _ Don’t tease her, you arse. _ ’

“And… the one you and dad were talking about?” Allura asked. “The Firestarter?”

The mood shifted again. “A  _ Dru’akar _ ,” Hira sighed. 

“They're... the one who lead the rituals?” Allura guessed. “Like dad, only there’s two of them?”

“Ten in total,” Matt nodded. “Or in a perfect Komaric world, there would be. A  _ Dru’kasha _ and a  _ Dru’akar _ . Two representatives from each element. They’re responsible for those who share their element within the Order, leading the harvesting, and as you said, leading the rituals, but the change in how we gather quintessence and general rarity of certain natures means the number varies.” 

“So now… there’s a new Firestarter  _ Dru’zan _ ?” Allura checked.

“They’re certainly trying to make one,” Hira said. “Do you think there’s a chance Keith might kick the bucket during the Palen-Bol at all?” she asked, her tone hopeful.

“Honestly?” Matt frowned, biting his lip as he added up what he remembered of Keith, and what he’d seen of the other  _ Palen-Bol _ , what he’d  _ felt _ when he graduated from Ulaz’s tutoring and the basic training rooms to the main rankings of the temple. “I don’t know. Keith started his trials even earlier than I did, and the ritual for becoming a  _ Drukk’d _ was hard. The one for  _ Dru’zan _ …” Matt shuddered at the memory. “It was torture, in comparison, and the first trial is a fraction of what the others are. Each one is longer, the amount of quintessence being forced into the body is five times twice over the last each time. For a  _ Dru’akar… _ it’s the completion of a trifold ritual, the final trial in the rankings. If Keith is anything like he was before, then…”

Before he could finish, the sound of rapid footsteps in the hallway drew their attention; Nyma appeared at the door, breathless and dressed in pyjamas. “Matt! It- Katie- she’s... she’s having an attack!”

The words sunk in, and Matt bolted from his seat up the stairs and along the corridors; the closer he got to the girl’s dormitory rooms, the louder the sound of his sister’s agonised screams became in his ears.

~•✮❖✮•~

The Halls of the temple were industrious when Keith awoke; even before midnight, when most would already be asleep, it was obvious that the brothers and sisters of the covenant were moving with purpose. 

The assembly was being gathered, and the  _ Dru’zan  _ and  _ Dru’zae _ snapped orders left and right under the watchful eye of their paired superiors. Keith watched the bodies scuttling back and forth from the doorway of his and Acxa’s shared rooms as the activity—the preparation for a large ceremony, his initiation into the ranks of the  _ Dru’akar _ —swept through the temple.

Even the younglings were getting swept up in it all. Nadia and Sylvio (who could normally do no more one night’s dark breath had touched the trees) raced past at one point, following Ulaz’s orders as they assisted in carrying some of the formal decorations.

Keith chuckled to himself when he heard them answering his questions about the ritual, the role of  _ Dru’akar  _ to the  _ Dru’kasha _ , the ritual itself, the concept of  _ Palen-Bol _ ; clearly the old man was taking the chance to quiz them on their studies of arcane rites while excitement motivated them. The twins were notoriously well practiced at ditching those lessons, much like their uncle once had been.

Still, that was just the nature of most Waterdancers, and the twins had inherited their uncle’s talent. In the same way he, Acxa and Lotor had once found themselves ears deep in smoke, or Hunk had always found himself reasoning them out of trouble.

Acxa’s words from the previous evening seared into his head—‘ _ You didn’t… you didn’t see Matt, did you? Lance thought he’d seen him with Alfor, _ ’—and Keith could stop his thoughts from going back to his lingering memories of the boy who’d once helped them in their own days giving Ulaz his grey hairs, the curiosity and impulsivity that matched his own. All the things that took him too far, and ultimately, had turned him to the traitor he was now.

Then again, maybe it was a good thing. He hadn’t been focused on his meditation as he should have been, and now, he had some clarity for his final hours of preparation.

“Ulaz is going to lose the last of his hair with those two,” Acxa huffed, leaning against the back of his shoulder as she peered out, snapping a bite of a bright green granny smith, the sound of the bites crisp in his ear, sour juice taunting on her lips as he glowered at her. She was already dressed in her own formal robes. “I can’t believe everyone is making such a fuss over you,”

“Can’t you go and eat that someplace else?” he frowned.

“Why?” she asked eyes wide with false innocence. “Hungry?”

“Obviously,” Keith said. “I’ve been fasting for five days.”

“Tough,” she piped, far too cheerfully. “I’m comfy here. Just think of the feast big brother, and all that quintessence,” she frowned. “You’re going to get taller than me again.”

“What a pity.”

She gave him a light, irritated thwack on the shoulder, then deliberately bit into the last of the apple, leaning up and kissing him while the juice was still fresh and damp on her lips. “See you at the ceremony, brother,” she sing-songed.

Keith scowled at her as she left the room, then wiped the apple juices from his lips roughly, before going back inside the room to change from his pyjamas into the loose robes he’d been provided for the ceremony. He had an hour left for meditation before it was time to leave for the sanctum, and he spent it focusing his core, the integrity and calm bluster of his own quintessence; he would need it to endure the ceremony.

Eventually it was time to leave; Thace, Kolivan and Ranveig were waiting at the door when he opened it to leave, and wordlessly escorted him down into the catacombs. The bowels of the temple were well lit with multiple charmed crystals, and the shadows passed like the warm caresses of a lover over his shoulders, where the sleeveless tunic left his pale skin bare to Komar’s depths.

A low steady drumbeat echoed through each of the passageways, bouncing from wall to wall, a disorientating experience for anyone unfamiliar with the pathways. So many intruders had become lost in the maze in times past, or traitors hauled down to their dooms.

They passed those traitors on the trip, a reminder of the fate for those who would defy Komar’s will, but Keith saw not the dangers or the warnings; he had no need of those. He’s always done his best to serve as he was willed, and for the most part, had never had cause to claim the wrath of their spiritual mother. 

He let the beats sink into his mind, the echoes turning into a comfortable pressure, helping him stand tall in face of the trials for the reward; the promise of success. This would not be where he fell to meet the spirit of creation in defeat, but to be made anew. 

A dim violet glow shone from the sanctum as they approached, the drums growing louder, an echo through his core as he walked between the seated crowd in the vast cavernous room. The amphitheatre looked down upon the dias where the plinth had been set up, a sturdy metal frame. On one side of it an amethyst crystalline pitcher.

The drumbeats came from the bottom row of the amphitheatre, a circle of double side drums and drummers who maintained the slow and steady rhythm; higher up, he could hear the slow, light tones of the ritual flutes, but his focus was on neither of them.

The four  _ Dru’kasha _ and Ulaz stood in appointments upon the dias, surrounding the plinth, and along with the  _ Dru’akar _ accompanying him, Keith lowered himself before them, bending on one knee and bowing his head. He heard their footsteps and felt the brief touch of their fingers upon his shoulders.

“Komar has spoken,” the five intoned in ritual tongue. “Keith, Son of Krolia, Son of Heath, Twin Brother of Acxa, of House Marmora,  _ Dru’zan _ of Fire; you have been called for the third and final time to undertake the Trial of  _ Palen-Bol _ ,” their voices echoed over the low, almost silent drum beats. “Do you submit yourself to Komar’s enlightenment of your own free will?”

“I, Keith, Son of Krolia, Son of Heath, Twin Brother of Acxa, of House Marmora,  _ Dru’zan _ of Fire submit myself willingly to Komar’s lessons and trial.”

The drums struck.

The other priests hefted him to his feet and Keth climbed up to the plinth, lying down and reaching his arms after disrobing to let them shackle his ankles and wrists. Not to keep him caged but for the safety of the others in the amphitheatre, and himself;  _ Drukk’d and Dru’zan  _ before him had been known to go mad from pain, or worse— _ failure _ .

The drum beats had picked up pace now, and the  _ Dru’kasha _ has taken their places back on the trigram points. Before returning to their places in accordance beside them. Ulaz—a Lifeweaver, their  _ only _ Lifeweaver—took the place of the missing  _ Dru’kasha _ , completing the five-fold pentagram.

“Those who submit also seek; has your meditation revealed Komar’s guidance for your fifth and final trial?”

Keith let out a calm breath of flame. “It has.”

Keith closed his eyes as Ulaz, Veronica, Colleen, his aunt, and his sister, all took a reliquary of quintessence into their hands. The drumbeats intensified, he heard the low chants of the  _ Dru’kasha _ , of the amphitheatre, and the high pinnacle of the ritual flutes.

“Patience be your calm, focus be your guide, and Komar’s blessing your success;” the five chanted. “By Komar’s will, and by you, be it done.”

The deep percussion of the largest drum shook through his bones, and the first reliquary was opened, and the world burned as quintessence consumed him, a raging fire over his skin that he bested away, burning and consuming the enemy flames to become one with his own. Following the first of trials, Acxa painted his hands and arms with the marks of the ritual’s completion.

The second reliquary choked his lungs like the ash of fiery earth, until his second purge of quintessence seared in heat such that even ask was vaporised by the flames that spilled from his lips. Veronica was the one to pain his legs and feet with the second set of markings.

The third boiled his blood in his veins, spilling in tears like gentle geysers from his eyes until he settled his core temperature, matched the bubbling sensation in his veins, reigned it back under his will. Colleen stepped forward, drawing the face markings into their place in the pattern that had been decided days before.

The fourth blasted him like the heated sandstorms of the desert, burning his skin as though it was grated with coarse sandpaper, until his power burned the abrasive attack til it felt naught but mere silk against his skin. His aunt was the ons to mark his torso and lower body with those marks.

The fifth and final one,like the pain of wildfire upon the land as quintessence scorched his core itself, and Ulaz stepped forwards, raising his hands, his chants turning the dark purple pains into the ritual itself, the coalescence of all the pain, all the victory, and with the last reliquary turned it against his very being.

Keith gritted his teeth, though he knew at some point he let out a roar of pain so as not to bite his tongue. It was torture; more than the rituals to ascend from his training as a youngling, more than the mental intensity of the  _ Dru’zan  _ trials. It was both of those and more, a three-fold test designed to put will power, spirit and body to the limit.

The raw quintessence attacked everything that gave him strength and power, that gave him life, and he gasped for breath, shaking, his eyes rolling back in his head as the drums reached their crescendo, and his heart began to beat furiously against his ribcage; he focused through the pain, willing himself a little longer, bolstering his body with the last drop of quintessence he had, thinking instead to the meditations and the questions that promised answers.

Without a complete circle of  _ Dru’kasha  _ they were weakened as a collective. If they could find just one person to empower Life in the circle, as Komar had once promised the covenant, then the final ritual could be completed. A Faunatonian Circle would give them the power to draw quintessence freely, without the constant ritual that had been forced on them by Oriandeans and traitors. 

He focused on that thought, the desire to better his brothers and sisters, to find what they lacked, to make their covenant stronger, and take what had been taken from them back; the pain was incredible, whiting out everything. The drum beats echoed, a rapid sound that carried Komar’s voice to him.

A heavy ringing noise echoed in his ears, his head as the whistle seemed to bounce everywhere and nowhere, then, everything turned red. Rushed images appeared in the blood-like haze before his eyes. The sensation of all, of the ground beneath his feet, the warmth of the sun, the taste of rain in the air, the wind brushing his skin, and the feel of a warm heartbeat; he focused on the heartbeat and a pair of light, hazel eyes, gazed back at him from a mirror, lost, screaming, contorted. He saw and felt confusion, fear, and anger.

He tried to reach out to the woman—he had to help her, it was Komar’s will—but the short moment passed, and his sight was directed away. The reflection changed, and he saw its source, it’s grief; pages of a black tome fluttering in anger as one of its  _ Dru’kasha _ was drained, her very being sucked away and choked into oblivion, before falling silent and untouched on a cold stone altar, unvoiced and unheard by the ones who needed it most… Then the moment was gone, and he inhaled, starting back as the hazed vaulted ceiling of the sanctum returned. Sweat clung to his skin, and his body screamed, but after three breaths, he remembered the final part of the ritual.

“Komar has blessed you with knowledge,” five voices intoned. “Speak the wisdom and take your place amongst your brethren,  _ Dru’akar _ .”

“The Faunatonian Circle is still within our grasp,” he gasped out, flames billowing from his lip on every breath. He felt as though he was going to explode from the amount of quintessence coursing through his core. It was burning, alive and so,  _ so much _ . He’d never felt anything like it. It tingled in his eyes and for a moment, Keith wondered if the ritual had left him blind. “The black book calls to us… there is another who commands life.”

His skin burned one last time, and he saw the bright glow of the markings now tattooed to his skin flare; the amphitheatre was full of excited murmurs as the shackles were removed, and after pulling a new, silken  _ Dru’akar’s _ robes around his shoulders, someone carefully helped him to his feet.

“Komar smiles upon us today,” his aunt called out to the covenants; Keith could see the outline and shade of her white hair in his hazy, exhausted vision. “With the successful initiation of my nephew as our Dru’akar of Fire, he and his sister unify an element ten years lost to our covenant, and the wisdom Komar has bestowed on him in blessing continues to guide us further. I bid you all to look forward to the future, but for now, let the celebrations begin!”

Keith inhaled, taking a moment to align himself with reality; he’d made it through the final trial, and Komar had given him guidance as his reward. They had a future as more than scavengers again. His veins felt heavy with the glut of quintessence in them, the new raw energy vast and alive, and his whole body felt different.

There was so much inside him, burning for freedom, for escape, and it left a thrill in him that he’d never before experienced. The urge to summon his flames and see the changes ascension had given him was great, but not now. Later. He needed to go to the practice arenas and regain control of his powers. 

The fact that his manifestation was igniting on his every breath was a testament to how much control he no longer had of himself. Acxa’s hands slipped between his fingers, helping him to his feet. “Mum’s proud of you, Dad is too” she said quietly, her thumbs gentle over his knuckles. “She… I don’t think they can  _ be _ here, but I  _ know _ ,” she said.

Keith stiffened a little, then wrapped his arms around her. He might have taken the lion’s share of power from her, but he envied the abilities the mix of their father’s blood and talents had given Acxa at times like this, when she could tell him things his flames would never know. He took the short moment of comfort then smiled at her as Kolivan and Thace helped him to his feet.

He dimly heard some squabbling about who between the pair had ended up with the worst post  _ Palen-Bol  _ decompression, but Keith tuned it out; the adrenaline was starting to wear off, and everything was starting to ache. After a trip to the healing halls, there were only two things he wanted to focus on; his sister’s warm hands and proud face as she helped him back to his feet, and some fucking apples.

~•✮❖✮•~

_ “Katie, I need you to trust me a little longer, okay? Hold onto me tight, and close your eyes! I promise, this will all be over soon!” _

_ Matt turned her towards him, and Katie hid her face in his shirt, trying to hide her fear and tears as she heard him chant strange words—a spell she’d never heard before—amid the shouts of protest. There was a loud crack, and then a dizzying whirling sensation, a strange enveloping of magic she’d never felt, and then it stopped. _

~•✮❖✮•~

Drums beat through the air, a rhythmic call that struck at her very core, and Katie started awake in a haze at first. Nothing unusual. The nightmares that had followed her for most of her childhood were usually dulled and faded by the potions Hira made for her, and usually she just woke up hazy, but something felt different.

She could still hear drum beats, inside her head, like a frenzied heartbeat. Getting louder and louder so quickly that before she realised that the potion wasn’t working, pain rampaged through her conscious thought.

She tried to reach for her bedside cabinet, desperate for the potions, only to flail and cut her hand on the glass tubes, their contents leaking across the floorboards as she fell from her bed. Nausea choked her and the drumbeat’s echoes lingered in the back of her mind.

It grew and grew, and she sobbed, trying in vain to will it all away—distantly, she could hear someone rushing past her door, and tried to yell out—as it reached a white-hot pinnacle. A heavy ringing noise echoed in her ears, the constant drumbeat, a low sound of a flute and then the pain spread, encompassing her whole body, more agony than she had ever felt.

It felt hot, like she’d see fire on her breath if she opened her eyes, or that her lungs were being crushed by water, likes the earth was smothering her, like the air had been pulled from the world, or as if the very quintessence int he core of her being was shrivelling in her breast.

Eyes widening, all she could see was red. Everything was covered in red splatters. The walls, her hands, and as she curled up, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, the only colour to break the red seeping across her eyes was a pair of violet eyes that didn’t belong in her reflection.

For a moment, there was a moment of calm, of clarity, reassurance, then the foreign sight stirred her heart to panic.

No. No. No. No. No Trying to shout for help again, she ran her hands through her hair, trying to convince herself, remind herself that it wasn’t real— _ the smell of flesh and iron was thick beneath her nose _ —that it was just a hallucination— _ blood coated her hands and nightie _ —and that it was just residual magical trauma from when she and Matt had sought Alfor’s refuge. It wasn’t real— _ Katie tasted warm blood on her tongue _ . 

Katie screamed as the pain became incandescent, cradling her head, trying to keep the pain at bay. Somewhere she heard the sound of a light switching on, and hurried feet and voices. She felt gentle hands holding her hair back as she choked and sobbed and tried to wipe the stains off her hands and face. “Katie, it’s alright, Matt’ll be here soon, Nyma’s looking for him now!” Merla said gently. “It’s not real, it’s a hallucination!”

No, wait, not Nyma. Katie turned her head and looked at the dark-skinned, white haired girl holding her. Her stomach churned again, and unable to focus as everything turned red—completely red, it was like her vision had been  _ stolen _ from her. Her head felt like it was imploding. It felt like hours, and she wasn’t sure if she was trying to push away Merla’s gentle hands or look for them until she heard rushed footsteps in the hallway. Heavier footsteps entered the room, and a familiar voice.

“Katie!” Matt said, voice hoarse from sleep, his footsteps coming closer. “Katie, it’s okay, it’s just a hallucination, I’m here,” he reassured her, gently reaching out. 

Katie tried to speak—she recognised Matt’s voice, but the words were stuck for the pain, for what she couldn’t see, and raw fear—behind her screaming. Someone lifted her—was it Matt?—and as much as she fought the embrace, Katie curled into it, trying to hide front the agony crossing back and forth through her head. It felt like it was reaching every nerve in her body, and each one screamed.  _ Her whole body was burning. _

Amid it all, there were flashes of faces, fast and desperate between the bloodstains and the desperate, distant reassurances from her brother as he carried her to the healing halls. She couldn’t focus on them, mostly flashes of colours, the foggy silhouettes of people talking to her. She hated it. She wanted it to stop—

‘ _ …stop, I don’t like this! _ ’ 

—why wouldn’t it just stop? 

“Not much farther,” Matt mumbled.

‘ _ Katie—Don’t listen to him! _ ’

The gusts of wind ruffling through the cloisters as Matt ran across the courtyard seemed to whisper in her ear, creeping like snakes; Katie closed her eyes, trying to ignore it all. The red, the whispers in the wind. Matt would make it stop. He always made it stop. 

“Coran! Coran, it’s Katie!”

“Quick, on the bed. What happened to—”

“—I think she broke them by accident, but I watched her take one!”

‘ _ How— _ ’

Something touched her, and she screamed, panic taking over as she thrashed. She felt like she was in danger. Like something was wrong, and that she needed to run. A familiar sensation of magic came from a palm pressed against her forehead, and she felt sick. She didn’t want to be near it. 

‘ _ Katie, I need you to trust me a little longer okay? Hold onto me tight, and close your eyes, I promise, this will all be over soon. _ ’

She felt sick again, tried to fight the hands off of her, screamed for help. Where was Matt? Why was he letting them do this? What was happening? Why did everything hurt? She wanted it to stop, why wouldn’t he make it—

_ ‘Stop him!’ _

—stop?

“Coran, what’s going on? She’s never had a reaction like this!”

“I’m not sure but it clearly isn’t working,”

“Coran, please!”

She didn’t know how much more she could take—hands grabbed at her, trying to hold her down and she kicked and screamed, their touches burning her skin. Help. She needed help. In desperation she called out to her own power, to turn the nightmare and hallucinations into her own. The pain was on the edge of everything, her consciousness, but she willed it as hard as she could—

“Matt stop her Hold her down!”

‘ _ Traitor!’  _

—and let it burst free. She needed to escape. To get away. Make it stop herself. She thrashed and fought the pain before it broke, the red fading to static, drumbeats echoing like a heartbeat in her head as all the voices echoed in wordless white noise and unseen faces fading from her mind. 

All but the deep glow of a pair of violet eyes that were the last to pass from her mind as numbness overcame her, and finally, Katie felt like she could breathe.

~•✮❖✮•~

After a trip to the healing halls, Keith didn’t remember much about the celebrations. Most of it had been spent in revelry, and the following morning was an early one as he made his way to the training rooms to come to grips with the new energy the ritual had blessed him with.

It had kept him awake despite the alcohol, burning it away in its potency, and two days after the ritual (Ulaz’s insistence) he approached the training halls with nervous anticipation. He went beneath the temple, in the opposite direction of the sanctum. The rooms had been set up for each of the natures, some more than others, and Keith approached the room dedicated to Firestartes.

Once, it had been made a regular communal space by several people. His mother, Zarkon, Lotor, but now the room was there only for him and his sister, and there were no other voices to fill it as he opened the doors. Keith inhaled the cold air, refamiliarising himself with the scent of soot and brimstone baked into the walls from years of casting practice, letting the sensation hover over his arms, before he inhaled, and let out a normal blast of flames towards the targets.

The hit caused significantly more damage than he anticipated, and he hadn’t even focused, calling forth Komar’s blessing, the final reward of  _ Palen-Bol _ . He looked at the charred and burning target, remembered his force and the nuances of the casting.

Then he frowned and unbuckled the breastplate of his new armour suit, leaving it on the floor, and taking another deep breath and letting the sensation, the quintessence that boiled for freedom inside his veins, pleading to be set free, to be used by its new master for his ends.

It was rich, like bread given too much butter, but he had an easier time after discarding his armorsuit and reacquainting himself with the nuances of his own magic. He started small, as the others had advised amid tales of their own final  _ Palen-Bol,  _ while he had been in the healing halls, letting Ulaz check him over. It had been his plan anyway but it was reassuring to know that it really did expedite the process.

The morning drums struck, like an echo of Komar’s voice whispering through his head, and Keith paused, rehydrating himself with the litre bottles of water stashed in the supply cupboard. One of them went over his head, washing away the sweat dripping between his shoulder blades, making his hair stick to his head and neck, and three more he nearly inhaled. It took more water to fuel himself now then. He’d have to bear that in mind. He might not burn beneath his own flames but that didn’t mean he was immune to its effects either.

After a short rest, he went back to work, determined to at least learn how his powers had changed besides capacity and handling since the ritual. He worked for the further targets, and at some point one of the training custodians must have arrived because the targets were beginning to be replaced with new paper sheets on the metal frames, and he cycled through them. It was a lot easier to graduate his progress when he didn’t have to keep stopping to replace them.

Faster and faster, closer and closer, he could almost feel the pinnacle of it. The blasts of flames liked his skin like a comforting blanket, and brimstone filled the air. By now he would normally have had to stop to either recharge or visit the reliquary rooms, but there was still so much left, and he could feel it. The edge of his powers.

With a last burst of determination, Keith let the sensations of the ceremony flood his memory as he aimed, the beat of the drums, and Komar’s whispered secrets. He hurled his spells, letting his quintessence flood him, burst free and consume, the way they were intended. Everything felt warm, and his eyes tingled as he opened them again.

Keith watched as his hand—covered in vibrant lilac flame— glowed, the magic fading, and then looked at the end of the training room where the target frames stood, ruined melted and the hot metal dripping to the stone floor, twisted like they’d been contorted from the pain of the flames, and still growing from its effects. In the air the balls of purple flames still burned.

A slow clapping interrupted him from his focus. Quenching the flames with a breath, Keith turned and looked at the Druid leaning in the doorway. Lance hadn’t stepped into the room—that was how accidents happened with conflicting elements, and was precisely the reason for separate practice rooms—but his eyes were bright with curiosity.

“Is that what I think it was?” he asked as Keith picked up his new armour suit breastplate and strode towards him. “Very,  _ very _ nice,” he complimented. “Dude, Komar must  _ love _ you.”

“Maybe if you stopped fucking around and looked for guidance into taking the  _ Palen-Bol _ for becoming  _ Dru’zan _ , you’d have Komar’s blessing too. You’re up early; what is it?” Keith asked bluntly. Lance was rarely up this early, and while the custodian had arrived, they were usually present at dawn for some of the others who wished to practice certain rituals and spells; Ulaz was in the halls in the early morning and twilight hours for that reason, but he was one of few. 

“Full moon,” Lance said, confirming Keith’s guess as he stood straight. “My  _ Dru’kasha _ asked me to find you. We need to talk to you about the wisdom Komar gave you during the  _ Palen-Bol _ .”

Keith was surprised; of all the people he’d expected to want to talk about the  _ Palen-Bol _ , Colleen and Lance—both of them Waterdancers—were not the ones he had expected. His Aunt or Acxa, yes, but the surprise was enough curiosity in and of itself. They made their way back up the steps to the main temple in mostly companionable silence.

“Have you decided who’s going to be on your harvesting team yet?” Lance asked as they walked down the hallway towards Colleen’s rooms.

“I honestly haven’t thought about it yet,” Keith admitted. “I’ll have it figured out before we make another crossing though,” he added as Lance knocked on the door, and they stepped inside as it swung open in graceful welcome. “If you hurry up and take the trials, I might even pick you.”

He’d seen Colleen’s rooms many times since he was a child, and it was airy and welcoming as always. Her plants were well cared for and it was an inviting place. She was still in her morning clothes, a cup of coffee in her hands as she nosed at a book in her dressing gown, and Keith bowed to her respectfully.

She eyed him critically, short blonde-brown hair falling from its place tucked behind her ear as she set the cup and the book down on the coffee table beside a large bowl of water. “How much water did you drink?” she asked.

“Three or four bottles,” Keith said; there was no point lying to her, not when she could sense his dehydration levels.

Pursing her lips she got to her feet and went to the shelves behind the sofa where she kept her apothecary rack; in the center of it were two tanks of fish; one fresh and one salt water. She swept a finger across his brow, swiping the sweat, tasting it, before taking some from the salt water tank and greater portion from the freshwater tank. She opened a few drawers, and sprinkled the herbs into the concoction. He felt it charging with her quintessence, and then she handed the glass to him. 

“Drink,” she advised. “I remember your mother’s  _ Dru’kasha _ trials. She knocked herself out from dehydration after two days because she couldn’t keep up with herself,” the was an irritated, but fond, exasperation in her voice as she spoke, and Keith couldn’t help smiling. 

“I’ve heard that before,” he said, sipping the drink cautiously, only to find it a little sweet, and drinking more willingly after the initial caution passed. “Lance said you wanted to see me? About what I saw during the  _ Palen-Bol _ ?”

Colleen nodded. While you were recovering, Lance and I discussed something that happened while we were harvesting the quintessence for the ritual. We believe it may be related to the wisdom you were given for overcoming the trials,” she explained, gesturing them both to sit down. “Lance?”

Lance nodded, and drew his palm flat across the large bowl of water Colleen kept on the coffee table. Like a mirror ,Keith watched the scenes that played, from Lance’s perspective. A blonde-haired woman approached him, offering quintessence in exchange for information on a photograph. The picture matched her appearance, but the woman she sought the information on was clearly the woman sitting beside him.

Lance had interrogated her, forcing her to drop the glamour, and Keith took a breath as he looked at her face. Sandy brown hair and hazel eyes—the ones he’d seen during the visions. It was the same woman, who looked uncannily like Colleen, and had told Lance she believed her to be her mother under his interrogation.

As her face was revealed he watched her hand, reaching out to what looked at first like stones scattered on the ground, but then burst into strong seedlings, almost  _ vines _ before Alfor interrupted.

“Komar told you of a lost Lifeweaver,” Colleen said. “I believe this girl might be Katie. Keith, I know that Komar’s wisdom is sacred, and you have no obligation to tell me—I would  _ never _ ask that of you—but please… if there’s any chance...”

Keith inhaled again, letting the flames fan on his exhale to release the tension held in his shoulders as he wondered the same thing. “Acxa said you ran into Matthew,” he said, looking at Lance. “Are you sure it was him?” he asked, looking at the figure the girl ran to beside Alfor as soon as her freedom had been given.

“I’ve only met him a couple of times,” Lance admitted. “But I recognised his base quintessence. I’m sure it was him, not to mention…” he opened his mouth and stretched out his tongue, allowing another globule of water to flow out, within it were several red specks. “…I made sure to get some back up data,” he grinned.

“Can it be tested?” he asked. 

Colleen nodded, picking up a knife from the table and making a small nick on her fingertip, allowing a few drops to fall into the bowl on the table. Lance let one of the drops in his bubble fall too, and they watched as they stirred together. Colleen charged the spell, and they waited for a reaction, the curdling of falseness and incompatibility, but it didn’t come. Instead the water cleared, a crystalline glimmer appearing despite the lack of light.

“I think that all but confirms it,” Keith said, looking at Colleen. “I don’t think there’s any doubt that the woman Komar showed me is your daughter but why now? After all this time… she’d be more an Oriandean than one of us anymore.”

“Perhaps; I asked myself the same question,” Colleen admitted, her eyes turning back to the picture frozen on the water’s surface. “But, if I remember her birthday well—and I do—then very soon it will be her eighteenth birthday, and she will be required to choose an arcane house.”

“Limbo,” Lance said. “She could change her mind, and Alfor wouldn’t be able to stop it.”

“Indeed,” Coleen nodded. 

“But why would Komar show this to me?” Keith asked, frowning. He was following the conversation easily enough, but not the technicalities. Yes, there would be five cycles before her birthday during which the girl would be able to freely change her arcane alignments, but that would have to be of her own free will. If she had been brainwashed for the past ten years, he doubted she’d look upon them with any favour. “I’m not doubting, but I’m a Firestarter, not a Lifeweaver. Why reveal this to someone without a common element? Ulaz would have been better.”

“Dude, Ulaz is ancient,” Lance snorted. “And we haven’t been able to restock the Lifeweaver reliquaries properly for  _ years _ . He can’t even go on high intensity harvesting raids anymore, let alone something like this.”

“Not to mention,” Colleen interrupted. “The cycles are  _ always _ dominant, but I think in this case their interplay is more important: when a volcano churns, doesn’t that fire and ash which destroyed make the land richer, and birth it anew?” she asked. “I think Komar was particularly wise in choosing to reveal this to you Keith,” she said. “Besides, Katie came looking for  _ me _ , not the other way around, and I doubt Alfor would have agreed with that. It’s a shot in the dark, but I have to wonder if his control of her is as secure as he thinks.”

Keith looked at the picture of the woman on the water; it was frozen in the memory where she had approached Lance, holding out the picture.

‘ _ I don’t know her name, but I think she’s my mother _ .’

It sounded hopeful, but desperate, confused, and lost, just like the visions had told him during the  _ Palen-Bol _ . Was this a task he’d been given? It seemed too coincidental to be anything else, and he knew that Kolivan and Ulaz both had been guided by Komar following their own trials, that their gifts had been preparation for the tasks ahead of them. 

Was that why Komar had given his flame such power? Was he to take on the Oriandean shamans? It was starting to seem that way.

“That blood,” he said. “Can you use it in a scrying spell?” he asked Colleen.

It wasn’t the first time she’d searched for her son and daughter, but before things had been more complicated. Mathew had still been a minor himself, and minors were immune from most forms of scrying spells. Katie still was, so when she and her brother fled, and their father destroyed all tangible traces of them within the temple, there had been nothing left to even search with.

Even now that Matthew was older, they had nothing to look for him with beside a few chance sightings, nothing to scry with, but Katie’s blood… that was a sure fire way to find her, and even minors wouldn’t be immune to the search from a blood relative with their own blood as the conduit to the spell. It might be a guestimate of her location, but even a general location would be enough.

Colleen smiled at him, but the soft curl on the corners of her lips were not just pleasure, or assurance, but the confidence of a woman who had seen off the accusations of turning traitor, prover her worth, and had the strength to condemn her own husband for his crimes and betrayal, and still retain her rank without any doubt in loyalty from the covenant.

“I already have.”

~•✮❖✮•~

The wind howled and cried, like a scream of mourning, and as Katie opened her eyes again, through the fog of medicine, the world was brightened by the dim light of morning. 

Trying to process the lingering ache in her head, and the circumstances, Katie could only guess at how she’d ended up in the healing hall. She’d had a night attack again, a bad one, and she’d been given the sedatives that stopped her magic going crazy. It would certainly explain why it felt like someone had stuffed her head with cotton wool.

The ceiling of the healing hall arched above her, and looking at the side of the bed, she looked at her brother; he was snoring, one elbow resting on the cabinet beside the bed to keep himself propped up. It had always been Matt who looked after her; even if she was curious about her parents she doubted knowing them would replace the presence her brother had in her life. He’d always been there, watching over her, just like now. 

The night she and her brother had taken refuge with Alfor was a memory that plagued her with fits and indescribable headaches, and one that she could never remember. She got an impression of feelings mostly; fear, confusion. Knowing now what her mother was, she couldn’t help but wonder where the fear came from, what exactly had happened.

Not yet though. The lingering trauma from the event, and the effects of it now fresh in her mind, was enough to put her off asking Matt to start digging up that particular molehill just yet. 

Groaning as the nausea of potion-induced grogginess rippled through her as she turned, She tried to take Matt’s example, and just sleep. She was exhausted. Her head still had a dim ache, and she could feel the drain in her quintessence. Her magic had gone crazy after all.

Looking around at the other sickbeds, she could see the place where the others hadn’t had the chance to fix the cracked plaster patches on the wall surrounding her own; there was even the smoky mark of a blast on the floor.

“Hey there sis, back with us?” 

Katie looked back at her brother, who was watching her with sleepy eyes. 

“Depends on the definition,” Katie grumbled, blinking, trying to wake herself up a little. “I feel like I died for a while. What happened?”

Matt gave her a worried, tired smile, tucking the covers around her shoulders. “We’re not sure. Coran and Hira have a theory that being so close to a Komaric ritual turned things up to the eleven,” he said. “Do you remember anything?”

Katie shook her head—instantly regretting the movement—and closed her eyes. “Just… it wasn’t just my head Matt. It felt like I was  _ burning, _ ” she said, shivering as she thought back to the intensity of the pain that ruled her. “Or drowning, like… like I was being buried alive, or all the air had been sucked away, all at the same time, and…”

“…like the quintessence was being drained out of you?” Matt asked, his voice tensed.

Katie nodded, trying her best not to let the combine nausea of the chilling memory and medicine get to her. “It felt like someone was watching me,” she said, hoping she could just go back to sleep. “Like they were inside me, staring at me, and I could hear things…”

Matt’s fingers tensed in the covers. “It’s over now, I promise,” He said, pulling her into his arms. “You’re safe. Hira’s going to tweak your potions just in case, that way we can try and get ahead of any relapses for a while.”

Katie nodded, and looked at the new rack of vials standing beside the water jug on the bedside cabinet; the blue was darker, and it looked a little more oily than milky like her old ones had. It was probably disgusting, but she sat up, and took the one her brother handed to her. She downed it in one, almost gagging on the taste until she took the glass of water Matt gave her. A few sips quenched her dry throat, and she sat back against the pillows again. “How long…?”

“Two days,” Matt said, taking her hand as she made herself comfortable. “It’s half past five, fifteenth. Coran reckons you should be okay to leave by tomorrow; he wants to keep you in overnight just in case, Okay?”

_ Two days?  _ No wonder Matt was worried. She’d never been out that long before, or was that how long it had taken to…? Katie stuffed the thought away, not sure she wanted to know the answer, and nodded at the information; she didn’t really feel like making the walk of shame back to her room anyway. She felt terrible, and the others on her floor would have heard it all; she’d rather not suffer the indignity of being gawked at when she felt like shit.

She felt Matt lean down and kiss the top of her head, before his footsteps faded, and the door to the healing halls closed behind him, and Katie looked up at the other occupant of her bedside table. Baebae had been left there, probably by Matt, and after a moment she reached out for the plush, looking at the worn toy.

The purple fleece of his worn coat reminded her of the violet eyes that had stared from her own in the mirror.

For a very short moment she remembered a reassuring presence, a clam, before memory of it all became a blur, but cast that thought for later pondering too. Matt was right. She was exhausted, and she just wanted to rest. After putting the hippo back on the nightstand, she turned her back to it, and drifted off.

* * *

I'm a few chapters ahead so thought I'd get this out. A HUNDRED-THOUSAND THANK YOU'S to [Fairia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fairia/pseuds/Fairia), who looked at this ~~mess~~ ~~monstrosity~~ and told me where writing enthusiasm had forgotten to explain actual plot points and necessary world-building informations, and listened to my constant rambling about this AU.

Please send her all the Kudos.

Hope you enjoyed the chapter ❤︎


	3. If I Play Along

After the absolutely fascinating conversation, and yet another mug of potion Colleen insisted he drink before leaving, Keith had one final place to go before he made any decisions on harvesting teams or tasks the great spirit had given him, and that place was his aunt’s ritual room.

It was set up in one of the towers of the temple, where the Windsinger training rooms and sky playground were also found, and as he ascended the steps, Keith thought about everything he had seen and heard from Lance and Colleen. He was sure that her daughter was the woman he had seen during the trial, and he was sure that finding her and bringing her back to the covenant was the task he’d been given in exchange for being awarded his new abilities.

But first he had to find out a little bit more about her, about what her brother had been up to, and he also needed permission from his Aunt to leave the temple. Without a full circle of  _ Dru’kasha _ , seniority fell to the oldest and most experienced; in this case his aunt, their chief Windsinger, Honerva.

He knocked on the doors to her ritual chamber upon reaching the top level of the tower. Following the quiet, firm permission from the glow of the handles, he waited for the locks to open before unlocking the doors.

His aunt stood in her robes, peering out of one of the windows, and her eyes flickered in his direction as he knelt in formal greeting. “I was expecting you to visit sooner,” she said, voice sharp, for a moment giving him the concern that he had taken too long. “I’m glad you did not. Caution is not foolish following the _Dru’akar’s_ trial.” Keith felt the breath of relief in his chest, but didn't let it be audible, and maintained his prostration. “Thace and Kolivan nearly killed themselves despite their success by overtraining too soon,” she scoffed before crossing the floor. It was carved with her personal ritual circle; one of the rewards from her own final  _ Palen-Bol _ , long before Keith had even been born.

She put her hands on his shoulders, and he felt the examining curl of the air around him, curling around his ears, his throat, like it carried her voice and grip as she examined him. Her wrinkled eyes were sharp and clear as the long white hair on her head. “What changes to your powers have you observed?”

“Range, intensity, the smaller spells have become more complicated in judging the amount of quintessence required, but I expect to reclaim control of those with time. The endurance of the spells and amount required has also increased and decreased respectively.”

His aunt smiled. Still knelt before her, Keith couldn’t see the expression, but he could feel as she circled him. “That is wonderful news,” she said. “Individual blessings?”

Keith bit his tongue. “Yes Ma’am; towards the end of my training, my flames turned violet. I believe it to be Xanthorian Fire.”

His aunt stopped, and he felt her eyes on his neck. “Then truly, you have been favoured by Komar,” she said. “Just like Krolia. Stand.”

He did so, and she stood back, eyeing him with a critical eye

“A little taller already,” she mused, a little humour in her gravelly voice. “Still a little scrawny in the shoulders, but that takes time, too. It’s a pity we have no other Firestarters beside your sister; if the other matches you could make weren’t likely to be so unfruitful... I presume Acxa is still displeased about your growth spurt?”

“She burned my socks this morning,” Keith offered casually; it wasn’t a lie either. In the end he’d gone down to the training rooms barefoot—better for training then anyway. The more skin contact he had with natural centres of warmth and heat, the better.

“And I have no doubt you will do something equally ridiculous in return,” his aunt, sighed. “I know your uncle would be pleased to see his place being taken so competently,” she said. “My dear sister, too,” Keith bit his tongue again as she traced a spot where the ritual marks had been tattooed to his cheeks. They were invisible now, but the faint trails had appeared when he had practiced. “You always have been so much like her; whatever task Komar has given you, you will succeed. I presume that is why you are here?”

Keith nodded. “I hope that I can meet those expectations Ma’am, and after I have completed the task set before me, I will take your advice in ensuring the future of my element within the covenant gladly,” he said. “And yes. That and I wished to discuss the initial selection for my harvesting unit,” Keith nodded. “I have already found some support as to what the task I’ve been given is, but I wanted to consult with you before making the crossing for the mortal realm.”

His aunt pursed her lips, then nodded. “Speak freely then, but no more than what should be sacred between you and the great spirit.”

Keith nodded, calmly and carefully told her of some of the vision—the things that applied to Katie only, not the uncertain whispers that had followed, and threatened to confirm what he had always suspected—and the information Colleen and Lance had shared with him. His aunt regarded it all without opinion on her face, and the same sharp, piercing gaze that had dominated his childhood since the deaths of his parents.

His aunt was not a soft-hearted woman. She had been firm and unrelenting; the loss not only of her sister and brother in law, but of her own son and husband in one night had made her determined that he and Acxa be as powerful as possible so that they too didn’t meet the same fate. It hadn’t been a kind care, but he wouldn’t be in the position he was now without her teachings. For that at least he was grateful, if it meant he could keep Acxa safe.

“I’m not surprised that Colleen spoke to you,” his aunt said finally, sitting down on one of the window seats. “At least Lotor died fighting to protect his covenant; I can only imagine her grief, watching her own son take so precious a daughter away from her. Normally I would caution you against her obsession, but in this case…” she bit her tongue between her teeth in thought, and Keith tried not to let the agitation of waiting the response show. “…I believe your judgement is right. Lifeweavers are as scant as Firestarters, Ulaz cannot maintain the entirety of the element by himself for much longer; we are lacking, and there's a certain poetry in reclaiming the child.”

“It is also an opportunity to cripple the Oriandeans,” Keith said. “Alfor would be a fool not to bring her into the deeper folds of the shamans. She was blessed at birth, from what Colleen told me, and despite his allegiances, the fact that she and Sam were able to complete the ritual and succeed in conceiving not one but  _ two  _ Lifeweavers…”

“Indeed, her magic was strong even as a youngling, and Alfor is no fool—the chance to gain the power of two Lifeweavers into his hive is not one he will give up easily. Indeed, it is in our interests to reunite the girl with her mother. I believe Komar has chosen wisely; you are well sited for the task, but you will need to be fast, and decisive, and as overwhelming in your pursuit as your element.”

“Limbo,” Keith nodded. “With your permission, I’ll make the crossing as soon as possible to begin,” he said. “If I place myself in a position close to the girl and asses how she lives and her life now, I’m confident that one way or another I’ll be able to separate her from Alfor’s protection before it ends, not to mention the black book.”

“Yes, there is that too… How long is her limbo?” his aunt checked. 

“Fifteen days,” Keith said. 

The date of her birth, multiplied once for each of the turns of the cycle. Colleen had told him Katie had been born on the third of April. It was now the fifteenth of August. That gave him a little more than seven months to become acquainted with the security surrounding the girl, as well as Katie herself, and come up with a way to make her conversion back into Komar’s protection as seamless as possible.

“You have some time then.” His aunt nodded. “I expect you to keep me informed,” she said, looking at him with a firm gaze that had taught him to be terrified of failure, and never ever show it before her. 

“Yes Ma’am.” She nodded, but Keith didn’t let himself relax. “I’ll leave tonight. I’d also like to take some of the people I’m considering for my harvesting unit as a test run, to see how well we work together.”

“Name them.”

“Lance, Hunk, Acxa, and Curtis.”

His aunt frowned. “Hunk will be a valuable asset, and you have worked well together in the past. If he wishes to join you, I have no objection. He is planning to take his next  _ Palen-Bol  _ soon however, so speak with Veronica beforehand. It will be to his benefit, so I’m sure she will not object given the seriousness of the task ahead. Lance is… not a choice I would have expected from you. You can’t stand the boy, nor he you.”

“His abilities will be valuable; he has great potential, and as much I personally do not like his attitude, there is no point in wasting him in the ranks of the  _ Drukk’d _ forever. I believe when put to use where his talents will be of the most benefit, he will flourish.”

“Very well, I can’t see Colleen forbidding you his assistance and I’m certain he will be willing to help in finding her daughter,” she said, then her face became curious. “Why Curtis?”

“Besides having as even a team as possible, if we are to have any chance of locating the book, a Bookkeeper will be of use. He is older too, a  _ Dru’zan _ , and has more experience in crossings and harvesting than the others.”

His aunt nodded. “I’ll tell him he will be transferring to your unit. Expect him to be ready,” she said, then a tense silence filled the room as he waited for her last assessment. “You do not need Acxa.”

Keith swallowed his frustration. “With all due respect,” he said, doing his best to retain as much calm as possible. “Acxa is my  _ Dru’kasha _ . My task is hers, and besides the benefits having a full elemental pair present will bring, her talents have the capacity to give us a huge advantage, not to mention they are never going to improve without field experience.”

“No,” his aunt repeated, her tone sharper. “I understand your wish to help her, and it is commendable; you are correct on all those points too, but they are exactly the reasons she is too vulnerable to be allowed field work. If only one of you must take up that burden, then surely you agree it ought to be the one who caused her vulnerability in the greed of his birth?”

Keith tried not to show the flinch that ran through him. “Then please, allow her more crossings; she’s hardly invulnerable and it will still allow her to aid us in the human world.”

The silence was heavy, and Keith braced himself as his aunt got to her feet, taking his jaw in a firm grip that no human of her age would have possessed. She peered into his eyes, the chilling grey-blue of her own boring into him. “Komar’s blessing might have emboldened you,” she said, that air seeming to echo her words. “But don’t let it make you too bold, Nephew,” she warned. “I’ll humour your request, but you are to accompany her at all times, inform me of her absence, and escort her to and from the temple. Her absences will be no longer than twelve hours. Am I clear?”

Her fingers dug into his skin, and Keith nodded. “Yes ma’am.”

“Then proceed with your task; may Komar’s guidance take you to success.”

The grip was gone, and she turned away, heading back to the window she had been observing the Windsinger’s practice from. Sensing his dismissal, Keith bowed once more, and left the room. The room bolted closed after the doors slammed behind him, the echo following him down the spiralling steps.

Only once he had reached the bottom, and found solace in one of the torch niches did Keith let himself exhale, breathing in the scent of the flames, the heat and warmth as the lingering traces of his aunt’s magic threatened to starve his own. He let the moment pass, and then he regained himself, confident with the knowledge that everything was prepared.

He’d made it this far, and he would not fail the task set before him; for the sake of his sister, he had no other choice but to succeed. He would find Katie, bring her back to Komar, and maybe—just maybe—get the justice their parents and the covenant deserve by ridding the world of Honerva’s cursed existence.

~•✮ ❖✮•~

“Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” Matt asked, watching Katie as she pulled on a jacket.

He’d brought her clothes down after a check-up from Coran and Hira proclaimed her fit enough to go to school, thou with strict instructions to call Romelle straight away to pick her up if she felt nauseous or headachy, or otherwise out of sorts—they explained that her new potions were stronger so might need some tweaking to keep any side-effects at bay, and it was probably true.

“I’ll be fine. It’s school, Matt. I’m not exactly going to be running marathons.”

Katie still couldn’t help but feel like Matt was using it as a chance to smother her in cotton wool. “You know, you don’t have to go to school?” he said as she checked her bag for her maths books, and computing notes. “You can stay in the Commune if you want to take another day.”

And be bored out of her mind studying for a ritual she wanted no part in? Katie taking her bag. And zipped it closed, but held the words on the tip of her tongue. Matt was just worried after the attack, and he had every right to be. She was a little bit concerned herself, but that didn’t make facing the impending punishment any less ominous

“Alright, I’m sorry, I promise I’ll stop,” he said, holding up his hands as she huffed her bag onto her shoulder. “I just don’t want you to push yourself too soon, you heard Hira,” he said. “Am I not allowed to be worried about my baby sister?”

Katie made a face. “I’ve had attacks before and I’ll probably have one again,” she said, giving him a hug in spite of herself. “Can we go now, since you’re the one driving?”

“Watch it,” he scolded, taking her hand; in his hand his talisman glowed and in moments they had glimmered into the mortal realm, appearing without so much as a blink of surprise from the surrounding humans. And why should they? Science was one of their major accomplishments, one Katie enjoyed the applications of, but even that didn’t give them the ability to look for what they didn’t try to see.

“Romelle will meet you here when you let out,” he said. “Don’t be late,” he warned, voice pointed. Katie reluctantly accepted it; she’d already told herself she deserved all the scoldings, and Romelle was at least nice.

With temporary parting greetings and affection, Katie turned and headed up the steps into the building. Her first port of call turned out to be an appointment with her guidance teachers, about the ‘ _ skiving the whole afternoon _ ’ thing. No surprises there, but still. It was a little bit of a pain to have additional punishment homework eating into the time she’d have to give to her real education.

Not that school wasn’t good but instead of considering colleges like her classmates, her graduation from childhood was a little more complex than just what she was going to study for the next few years. Choosing an arcane house was normally for life, and if she really didn’t want to join Oriande in full, then she needed to think about her options.

They were infuriatingly limited; her best bets were either living as a Renegade, or… joining Oriande, and neither were palatable. Matt was probably right about it all, but she just couldn't lie and say she approved of the methods. Giving the control of her quintessence to one singular person to whatever they wanted as and when they pleased just didn’t feel right.

It certainly didn’t help that everyone kept acting as though the decision had already been made for her, by virtue of being Matt’s sister. It certainly didn’t help that people were already criticising her for being too independent and laying claim to magic she had frequently and vocally declared was not going to be willingly given.

Then there was the problem of her mother. She knew it was best to wait and let the dust settle before bringing it up with Matt, but following his admittance that she wasn’t just a Komarian, but a member of their senior management team, she just had more questions.

What had happened when they arrived at the Commune? Matt had told her they died, but that had been an outright lie, and the more she tried to scour her brain about Komarians, tried to remember what she knew, the more dizzy the idea made her. She hadn’t really been told that much about Komarians, besides the obvious danger warnings.

The thoughts followed her through the morning and into the afternoon, distracting her from her classes. After she’d eaten and headed to the side room where the detention was held, she managed to put it out of her mind a little, but the fog of unease, and lack of knowledge lingered.

It sat in her head, like a fog, and eventually she stopped thinking about it; obviously, she was still unsettled from the news that she had Komarian ancestry, and she’d be better off waiting until she could look up some information directly, and have a decent conversation about with her brother.

There was probably something in the Commune’s library. She’d find out. But she’d give it time, and be a bit more careful. She had a feeling Alfor and Matt wouldn’t want her poking around at that kind of information if they’d  _ lied _ about it to begin with, whatever the reasoning behind it.

As expected, she made it through the day without complication. The bell rang for the end of the day, she said goodbye to her classmates and human friends—she didn’t really spend much time with them outside of school, but they weren’t too bad, so merited the title—and headed out of the main entrance, walking down the side of the science building to the car park. Busses had already pulled and were being inundated with the kids who weren’t walking, or being picked up.

Romelle stood at the gates, exactly where Matt had dropped her off, and gave her a cheery wave as she approached. With only slight reluctance, Katie headed towards her.

“Hey!” Romelle greeted. “I want to nip out somewhere before we head back, is that okay? It won’t take long, I promise.”

Did she have a choice? Not really but Romelle wasn’t trying to pour salt on her wounds, and Katie would prefer wandering around town to going back to the compound, even if she didn’t have the last word on where they were going. She nodded, and Romelle launched into a conversation about her afternoon training session, which had gone a bit sideways when she blew up one of the Waterdancer tanks by accident.

They wandered around the supermarket first—‘ _ Matt’s making meatballs tonight if you want to skip out on the canteen for a change, _ ’—and ended up back in the suburb shopping district after collecting the pork, beef, spices, and the berries for the sauce her brother had requested. They had spent far too long wandering around window shopping, and the confirmation that Romelle was stalling came when she led her into a small coffee shop.

“Doesn’t Matt want me back at the Commune?” Katie asked when they sat down on tome mini sofas in a cosy corner of the café. “Not that I’m complaining,” she added quickly, enjoying the warmth of her choco-matcha latte in her hands. “I just didn’t think…”

Romelle looked over her coffee, and leaned back in her seat. “I don’t see what he has to complain about if I’m still with you,” she said, giving her a conspiratorial wink. “Besides, I don’t think your brother knows that being a teenager is confusing enough; everyone expects you to be making adult decisions, but when it comes to treating you like one, it feels like hypocrisy.”

Katie wasn’t exactly sure how she felt about that, and sipped her drink rather than try to put her voice to uncertain words.

“I’m also one hundred percent certain that if he’d been where you are he would have done exactly the same thing.”

That Katie hadn’t expected. “Really?” she asked. She couldn’t really picture being as impulsive as she had been a few days ago. He was always so careful, so precise, and so adamant about making plans. 

“Matt does the best that he can, he always has; you are always going to be his first priority, but like I said, he forgets that life at your age is still made up of mistakes, even without his experiences,” she said. “It’d do him good to remember it.”

“So… it’s true?” the word blurted out before she could stop them, despite her earlier decision to let her ancestry lie for the moment. “Our parents… Matt… did he…?”

Romelle gave a small smile. “It is. It’s not my story to tell, that’s between you and Matt, sweetheart, but yes,” Romelle said, plainly and clearly. “He grew up in the Temple. I think he’d just entered the active ranks of the Cult, when he found out you were both in danger… and he decided to do something impulsive himself, around your age, she said, then she paused. “I’m not telling you this to make you feel guilty either. You deserve to know, if only so that you can actively protect yourself if you decided not to take the Rite of Javeeno.”

Katie winced. “It’s not like I think it’s terrible…”

“Liar, you hate the idea,” Romelle grinned as the waiter set down their sandwiches. “It’s alright. I’m not going to be offended. Choosing a house is a personal thing, so my reasons for joining aren’t going to be the same as yours would be anyway. My brothers all joined elemental houses, so I know about being the odd one out.”

“I just… don’t think it’s for me,” Katie shrugged, trying to be a bit more diplomatic. “I know its my best option, I know it’s safer, but I just don’t like the idea of Alfor or whoever replaces him later down the line having full control of  _ my _ quintessence. The fact that everyone seems to think it’s a done deal—Matt included—just makes it worse! Sometimes I can’t help wondering if they’ll even  _ let _ me leave, even if I want to.” 

Romelle’s eyes glimmered with surprise as her questions became more fervent, a more honest outburst. “Katie, of course they would!” she said. “All quintessence is dependent on free will, you know that. Is that really what... you really believe that?”

Katie sighed and slumped in the seats. “No,” she said, picking the rings of onion out of her ham & cheese with only slight repugnance. “Not really, I don’t think so anyway but… it’s just the feeling I get whenever Matt starts talking about it. He keeps telling me to talk to Alfor, but obviously Alfor’s going to tell me everything great about it, he’s the chief shaman. He’s not exactly unbiased.”

Romelle considered that, and hummed. “And that’s a very reasonable concern to have,” she agreed. “Giving one person that much responsibility over something so integral to us that it commands our physical life is daunting. Bandor and Avok both went to the Yendailians because they couldn’t bring themselves to do it.”

“Yeah, but I’m not a Firestarter, Romelle,” Kaite pointed out. “I can’t do that.”

It didn’t matter how many times she tried to reason or work out a better way; her options were to join the Commune and give Alfor absolute control over her, strike out by herself as a renegade, or keep looking for her mother and ask her very nicely not to drain her of quintessence. None of them were good options. Even Shiro, one of the all-knowing bookkeepers, hadn’t been able to offer any other options when she put the issue to him.

Romelle seemed to understand that too, but rather than force her to make a decision or force an opinion, she just empathised, which was nice. They chatted for a while before Romelle’s demeanour changed. After looking out of the window; the weather was still fairly bright for the time of day, and reasonably dry for mid august.

“I think we’d better go,” she sighed, checking her phone. “I think we’ve made Matt wait long enough,” she smiled. Romelle’s voice was light and cheerful but there was something off about the smile; it didn’t quite reach her eyes, and Katie couldn’t help her moment of suspicion as she took another look out of the window. 

She couldn’t see anything unusual; People passing by the café window, rushing for work, talking on phones, clustered in groups or singles doing their best to avoid the clusters, cars, bikes, buses. It was all an average image of Altea. Even a quick opening of the mystical senses revealed very little beyond the usual pulses of quintessence within humans themselves, or the pockets of nature poking through the city cracks.

Maybe Matt was just pissed with Romelle for going behind his back to be nice to her or something? That didn’t really sound right either but was all she could think of. Whatever, it wasn’t her business to get between a couple’s argument either way. 

They finished their food and drinks and wandered out of the café onto the street, into the throng of people. Outside, Katie tried again, hoping to get a better read on her surroundings, the people nearby, but there was still nothing. About halfway along the street Romelle pulled the talisman from her sleeve, before she could get any more sense of the street, and Katie felt the warm rush of her magic as she gripped her arm. 

The mundane expanses of the mortal world melted away, replaced by the walls of the Commune to block her view at every turn.

~•✮❖✮•~

The chunk of anyolite in Keith’s hand was warm as he looked down at Altea’s streets from the roof he’d found himself on after crossing from the temple. Their glamours were strong, but there was no doubt that the younger of the two was the girl Lance had seen at the harvesting; Katie Holt.

The stone had completed its duty, and would be hot to the touch of anyone else in its success, glowing from within, its deep magenta interior exalted. A response to the scrying and tracking spell Colleen had made from the blood retained from Lance’s encounter with her daughter. It had led him to a human school, and from there he had followed it all the way to the café on the street below.

Her glamour was identical to the one he had seen in the water mirror Lance had shown him; a security concern, but once a glamour was dropped or broken it took time to make a new one, so he could hardly blame a teenager for not fixing that yet, even one on the cusp of their arcane majority. 

The other woman though, he didn’t need a scrying spell or even need to know her glamour to recognise her. 

It was the same bitch that had nearly bled him dry of all his quintessence when he was trying to harvest, the night before his  _ Palen-Bol _ . He’d recognise the feel of another Firestarter anywhere, and they weren’t so common that he didn’t recognise an aura when he felt one. Behind him, there was one such person, but no stranger

“How did you get her to agree to it?” Acxa asked, peering down at their target—charge? Keith wasn’t sure what term best described Katie at this moment. They weren’t trying to harvest her quintessence, indeed Komar clearly intended this to be a rescue, for the girl as well as the Covenant, but she was hardly screaming for help at the moment.

He lifted a hand up to the arms wound around his neck as Acxa leaned against his back and rested her chin on his shoulder. “I asked  _ nicely _ ,” he said, squeezing her hands, the mingle of their quintessence reacting , tingling like sparks where their fingertips met, like warm, fizzing familiar raindrops.

“Liar,” Acxa snorted. “So, Katie Holt,” she mused, a little disdain and uncertainty in her voice. “That witch really wants to follow through with this?”

“It’s not her choice to make Acxa—it’s  _ my _ task. Even if she doesn't want to, I have no choice, and even a  _ Dru’kasha _ can’t stop me from following Komar’s guidance.”

“And that’s stopped her before?” Acxa asked, her voice cool. “I don’t understand why you’re so willing to do this when you know she’s just going to try and twist this for her own ends; let me guess, you asked her to let me come and go unsupervised  _ before _ the negotiations started?”

Keith didn’t answer her; he didn’t really know how to without agreeing. Not that he thought she was wrong, but he was all too aware that they were on an open rooftop, where the wind could howl and whisper all their secrets straight back to their aunt. He didn’t think she’d be able to hear them in the mortal realm, but still. Caution had always been the better part of valour.

“It’s not just Aunt Honerva who wants this Acxa; think about Colleen, about the rest of the covenant. How long has Ulaz gone without a  _ Dru’kasha _ ? You know what it would mean to him if we succeed,” he said. “After all he’s done for us, it's the least we can do for him.”

Acxa shifted, swinging her legs over the side of the building and leaning against his side; Keith stretched an arm out for her, their shared warmth biting back the windy chill, fuelling and sustaining them both comfortably. “Fine, for  _ Ulaz _ ; I could care less about Colleen—I accepted her innocence, but she’s the reason that traitor—”

“—I know, I know,” Keith tried to reassure her, winding a lock of her hair around his fingers. “It’s hard for me too, you know? But this is what Komar wants, so it’s what we’re going to do,” Keith said, his tone a little more pointed, turning his head towards her. “Or don’t you not trust me?” he asked.

Acxa stilled, rising to her knees then sitting over his legs, her back to the precipital drop of the five storey building, her fingers tracing his neck, running into his hair as she leaned in and pressed their foreheads together. “Never,” she stressed. “Don’t joke like that Keith.”

“You know I can’t joke.”

“Then why say something like that?”

“Because you aren’t.”

Acxa glowered at him. “I resent that. That’s a lie.” Keith said nothing, waiting for her to come to her own judgement call.

Before she could say anything, the distortion, the sense of the world being torn grew behind them; Keith turned his head over his shoulder in time to watch the dark glowing opening in the space of the human world reveal three more faces. Curtis was unembellished in his mortalwear, Lance no more noticeable than some of the bolder humans he’d seen among the crowds, but it seemed like no human clothes were ever destined to fit loosely over Hunk’s broad shoulders.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Lance said. “What happened to saying you hadn’t decided?”

“I changed my mind,” Keith said, leaning backwards, his back flat against the concrete. Looking back at them upturned was a little disorientating, but the uncertainty on their faces was good, especially on Lance. He didn’t want overconfidence. “Did you all get a basic brief from the other  _ Dru’kasha _ and  _ Dru’akar _ ?”

Curtis nodded firmly, Hunk a little more warily, and Lance just rolled his eyes. “Good, saves me the time.” Keith absently noted that Hunk was having trouble placing his eyes. With a fluid twist, he scooped his arm around Acxa’s waist, swinging his legs up from the edge of the building and pulling her to her feet with him.

“Acxa will be joining us on occasion, but we’ll be here for a while, so the first thing to do is see about finding a human to steal a glamour from. Pick someone decent, because we’ll be turning them into full façades. You might as well top up at the same time; for now, I’ll let Lady Firestarter here tell you the task at hand.”

Acxa eyed the three of them unconvinced, then looked back at him, utterly exasperated.

“Seriously?” she hissed in a low whisper. “Curtis yes, but Hunk gets too anxious and Lance has an attention deficit the size of the void.”

Keith gave her a pleading luck—‘ _ Komar’s teeth, I’m regretting this alrea– Ow! Hunk, you hypocrite! You’re thinking it too! _ ’— and kissed the knuckles of one hand. “Trust Me.” 

Acxa said nothing, but after a moment she pulled away, and turned to the tree of them. “You all know how the  _ Palen-Bol _ works; I expect the three of you to do everything in your power to ensure that the task Keith has enlisted you to assist him with is completed. I don’t have to tell you that the rewards for those who assist in the tasks are worth the difficulty that comes with them.”

Curtis frowned. “You speak as though there was more to the revelation, Ma’am.”

Acxa nodded to him, a smile curling gracefully at the corner of her lips. “You are correct, Curtis,” she said. “Besides the chance to complete the Faunatonian Circle presented to us with Komar’s guidance, the Grimoire is a second goal, but by no means any less important.”

Curtis’s eyes widened and he dropped to his knee before her. “You have my word Ma’am,” he said. “I will do everything in my power to see it returned to its proper place.”

“Wait, so, we’re looking for a book only your sister can even touch and has been missing for over a decade,  _ and _ trying to initiate a Lifeweaver who's been brainwashed by Oriande?” Hunk looked doubtful.

“There’s no trying about it, Hunk,” Keith said, turning his eyes away from the street as the two women looked out of the window; the Firestarter seemed to have caught on finally. Keith didn’t intend on revealing themselves, but knowing what the competition was like was always a good thing. “We are going to accomplish both those things, plus one more,” he said looking at the group. “Whether or not any of you discover our third task depends on the three of you.”

Lance looked surprised, a more serious demeanour sweeping over his face. “Three tasks?” he asked, no doubt making the connection with the factors which calculated Katie’s limbo. “But… aren’t the tasks handed down during the  _ Palen-Bol _ usually two at most?”

“You have three hours to get yourselves situated in this realm,” Keith said, turning back to watch as the two disguised faces left the café, looking around. The face of the older woman was full of nerves; her pace and eagerness to move were obvious. He might not be able to see their faces, but even glamours couldn’t hide emotions completely. “I recommend you finish before then.”

The Firestarter looked around as the pair paused among the crowds of humans, something in her hand, and in a blink, had disappeared with her charged as quickly as the twisting warps of elemental magic behind him began to take the three to their preparations. 

“We start tonight.”

* * *

More moving pieces have been added and I still have no idea where some of them are going but hey, I'm here for the ride. 

Hope you enjoyed the chapter!


	4. Secrets On Your Pillow

“...tter disappointment! Someone your age should be able to manage something so simple, Pidge!”

Katie tried not to flinch as her brother’s nickname grated on her ears from Allura’s high-handed voice.

Three weeks of Commune bound studying was a kind of torture that Katie hoped she would never have the displeasure of experiencing again. Mainly because it meant spending more time than she could reasonably tolerate with Allura.

It wasn’t that she hated her. That was maybe too strong of a word; they just didn’t see eye to eye on most things involving the Commune. Namely the concept of the Oriandean Collective and any and all of its practices. Since Katie was firmly in the ‘ _ it’s-creepy-and-I-hate-it-camp _ ’, and Allura was Alfor’s ‘ _ born-into-the-yes-camp _ ’ daughter, they argued.

A lot. Almost every single time they had a conversation.

She was nice, Katie supposed. Kind, even. But their differing internal compass would alway be a barrier in them seeing eye to eye. It was good to do some more practice with her own element with Trigel, but most of it was learning the rituals, theory, the code of practice for acolytes, memorising all the responsibilities and—most importantly to the Commune—quintessence management.

This particular rite was the most annoying of the practice rituals, because it meant that she and the other girls from the dorms had to sit for about six hours and share quintessence. Chanting, chanting, chanting, and she’d have to just let other people use her magic. Sure, Katie got to use theirs, but she could never make it all the way through without feeling sick.

She hated the feeling of other people using her quintessence, so never practiced; that was probably one of the reasons Matt had decided it was the best form of punishment. That and the transfer of the initiate’s first donation of quintessence to the chief Shaman was the main part of the ritual that would permanently tie her into Oriande.

She could hardly join if she didn’t perform the ritual properly. The downside was that unless she mastered it, what she was free to study was blocked. Even in the grimoire for Lifeweavers, the Oriandean’s book restricted the pages for those who weren’t part of the initiated ranks. Most grimoires did. It was the only way to protect a house's secrets, its enchantments, its rituals.

Without that attachment to the collective, she’d never see more in the pages than the most basic of spells, and that was what made choosing a house so important; without knowledge there was no protection as a renegade. Some eventually clustered together and had formed their own houses, but they were still easy pickings to others.

The Komarians weren’t the only ones who would harvest from arcanes; they were just the only ones who made no distinctions, and had some kind of ritual strength from numbers and followers. Some renegades might not reject harvesting humans, but drew a line as other arcanes. Others weren’t so concerned, but had no interest in the Cult. Some of the elemental houses were often at odds with each other, sometimes even with Oriande. 

It wasn’t a future she wanted, but at the same time the thought of following along and doing what everyone told her to felt _wrong_. The idea refused to settle in her stomach, instead churning every time she imagined herself in the Commune hall, beginning the transfer. It felt weak, if she had to put a name on it.

Still, Katie worked through her punishment; the sooner she could work through it, the sooner she could get back to working on her magic without being watched, or criticised every time she tried to do anything that wasn’t part of a ritual or basic practice rites.

But in the case of the ritual, her innate repugnance towards it made any progress her brother hoped for merely that; his hope.

Katie glowered across the floor at Allura, whose exasperation would be far more inspiring if she actually cared about her opinion on her inability to complete the ritual, and the implications of what was her third failure that day.

“I can, but I don’t want anyone else messing with my quintessence, it’s  _ disgusting, _ ” Katie said, shrugging her shoulders and getting to her feet. “I don't know what to tell you.”

“Pidge, I know you have reservations,” Allura said, trying to be calm, the first of her new markings fresh on her face. “But sharing quintessence within the collective isn’t going to take it away from you. You need to stop thinking so single-mindedly—”

“So that’s your long winded way of saying I’m being selfish?” Katie asked, frowning, wiping some sweat from her brow with a towel.

She was exhausted. After trying to stomach the feeling of other people messing around and handling her quintessence all day she felt sick, and no amount of water was going to make the invasive feeling go away without sleep to go with it. The session had gone on long enough. 

She was done trying to pacify Allura for another day, and she wanted to get a head start on some spells she wanted to test on her phone. It was the weekend, and no-one would be able to stop her from leaving the compound now that her confinement was up.

“”Pidge, you’re not listening to a word I’ve told you!” Allura said, sounding more irritated. That’s not what I meant! I’m just trying to help you open your core—”

“You’re right Allura,” Katie said, pulling off the short jacket of her training robe and replacing it with a t-shirt. “I’m not listening to a word you’ve told me,” she repeated, picking up her bag. “Because just like everybody else, you don’t seem to understand the very simple fact that I don’t  _ want _ to.”

Before Allura could contradict or try to lecture her, Katie left the training room, and headed across the central courtyard towards the dorms; a quick shower and change later, and Katie made her way down to the library. It was beneath the courtyard, each shelf carved from the solid bedrock of the Commune, each section encircling a circular room complete with a dias.

Upon the dias were five plinths, holding their elemental tomes proud for those who needed to consult them; her own was still open from the last time she had looked up some basic collection mechanics, and Katie picked it up easily. The library was thankfully quiet, just the way she liked it until she could get outside of the Commune, and the few spells she could look up were easy to find and write some notes on in the tome.

There had to be a way to get it to open the rest of the spells without having to do the stupid rite. The books might have been enchanted, but no enchantment was foolproof; there was always a way to counter, a back door, and if she could access it, make notes on the spells within the Oriandean grimoire, she wouldn’t need the Commune.

If lack of knowledge was the main problem forcing her to remain in the Commune, then she just had to get it. She’d connected human technology to her magic, something so remote from her nature that it ought to have been impossible, at least, according to Oriande’s principles. She just had to figure out how the limiting spells worked.

A cursory examination showed nothing she hadn’t already seen a hundred times before, so instead she let her quintessence examine and know the book instead. She closed her eyes and reached out to it, felt the connection between it and her own, trying to get a sense of its restrictions in regards to her.

It was difficult; the book absolutely did not want to let her see anything she hadn’t, in the eyes of the access spell, committed herself to Oriande for. It was firm in the rules—that generosity was only granted when Lifeweaver quintessence was exchanged through the Rite of Javeeno.

“Everything alright there?”

Katie looked up at the bookkeeper who had appeared at the shelves beside her table with a trolley full of tomes and scrolls. His hair was dark, a tuft of white falling over his forehead, and a friendly smile graced his face. She’d seen him a few times, usually putting used books back on the shelf or organising the archives for the past few weeks.

“Hi Shiro,” she said. “Sort of. I’m trying to decode something.”

Shiro chuckled. “Let me guess—still trying to get out of the Rite of Javeeno?” 

Katie nodded, dropping the leather bound tome onto the table with a glower. “Don’t you get judgemental on me.”

“Katie, I’m a spirit,” Shiro laughed. “It would hardly be fair for me to judge your decisions. I do recognise that look on your face though. Allura?”

Katie smiled; it probably spoke volumes that the only person she had any kind of pleasant relationship with besides her brother and his girlfriend was a library-bound ghost, but he was still better company than ninety-eight percent of the Commune.

The book Takashi was bound to had been moved out of storage a few weeks before she had headed out looking for her mother with the scrying spell, and she had met him exactly as he approached her now, hovering around in the bookshelves. They’d started talking, and she’d come to appreciate his other-worldly ear. 

Talking to a ghost wasn’t really normal even by arcane standards—they were usually bound to the mortal plane by conditional spells, or due to a lack of fulfilment. Sometimes they could be tricky, or dangerous, but so far Shiro hadn’t shown her any warning signs, and he was her only sympathetic ear besides Romelle.

“They’re all still convinced that I’m going to manage that stupid ritual by the time my birthday gets here; I think the lack of commitment is making them all panic,” Katie shrugged. “But that’s their problem. None of them listen.”

Shiro hummed. “I’m sure they mean well, but in my experience Oriandeans tend to be as zealous as Komarians, though I wouldn't say that to Alfor,” he grinned. Katie couldn’t help but agree. Fanatical was another word. “So, what’s the problem this time?”

Katie huffed, and looked at the grimoire. “I figured if I could access the higher level spells, I wouldn’t need to take the rite of Javeeno, and I could strike out by myself after my birthday,” she said. “But I need the find the back door that will bypass the conditional requirements for the rite of Javeeno on the book, and they’re pretty tight.”

“You’re sure about that?” Shiro asked. “Becoming a Renegade really is a last ditch option, you know. I can’t think of any of the ones I knew who actively wanted to choose that route.”

Katie shrugged. “It’s still better than becoming one of the sheep,” she said. “I can’t do it Shiro. I don’t… I don’t want someone to be able to control my quintessence like that. Have that much influence on me. It feels  _ wrong. _ ”

He gave her a commiserating smile, and rubbed her shoulder; it was tangible, but she could tell that was by the nature of his quintessence rather than any physical form. Still, it was nice to know  _ someone _ was on her side. “Do you want me to see if I can find any books on the ritual? Perhaps the more you know about it the easier it will be to find out if you can circumvent it?”

Katie gave him a suspicious look. “I’m not making deals with a ghost, Shiro, even if it’s you; I might have walked into a nest of Komarians but I’m not  _ that _ stupid.”

“No deals,” Shiro insisted. “I just want to help. I won’t ask you for anything in return, on that I swear by the void.”

Katie felt the dim echo in the air of the oath, but she was still surprised Shiro was willing to actually help her; he didn’t mind lending an ear, and sometimes had a few pointers about her simple spells, but actually offering to help circumvent Oriandean rituals? That was a little different, something he’d always held back from before.

“Why would you do that?” she asked.

“I’m a bookkeeper,” Shiro said simply. “It’s my job to help you navigate all this so that you find what you need, and if you need a back-out clause for the ritual, that’s your business.”

“Isn’t that, I don’t know, completely against the rules?” Katie felt that if Shiro was trying to encourage her, it shouldn’t be to run away from the Commune; if he had been an Oriandean bookkeeper while he was alive, shouldn’t he be trying to convince her the Commune was her best bet?

“I’m a spirit Katie,” Shiro laughed. “I'm not bound by the rules of the living, and I have no obligation to anything besides my connection to this realm; that I can’t do anything about, but anything else? That’s my decision, and I can tell this is something you’re more or less decided on. You’re a nice kid, and I would like to help you.”

Katie thought he was being sincere, but she still wasn’t sure. She’d already made one bad decision in the past few weeks, and she wasn’t keen to make another. The lack of a demand was reassuring—it meant she wouldn’t be bound to anything if she said yes—but that wasn’t enough. She’d known Shiro for a few months but Katie wasn’t sure if she trusted him that much.

“Pidge!”

Matt’s voice echoed along the hallway, and Katie started, her eyes turning to the doorway. Crap, why did he sound like he was about to give her another lecture? Allura had probably tattle-taled about how uncooperative and selfish she had been for not wanting to practice a ritual that gave her the creeps.

When she looked back at the other side of the table, Shiro was gone, and she let out a breath; Shiro didn’t really make himself known to very many people, but even Matt would have been able to sense a ghost if he’d stuck around, and she didn’t want to add that to the mountain of mistakes she always seemed to be making.

“Pidge! There you are! Didn’t you hear me?” Matt asked, walking past the dias and towards her table. “I’ve been looking for you for an hour! Allura said—”

“Something whiny about me being uncooperative again,” Katie guessed, closing the grimoire and waiting for the disappointed talk about how she needed to apply herself more.

Matt winced, sitting down, clasping his hands on the table. “To be fair, you did just storm out on her.”

“I sat in that room all day and tried to do the stupid ritual Matt; I was tired, I told her that I felt physically ill, and all she did was take the high ground and tell me what a disappointment I am for not meshing well with a ritual I don’t want to be part of. A fact she, and everybody else in this place, refuses to take into account. She was being a condescending bitch, so I left. End of story.”

“Pidge—” Matt broke off and ran a hand through his hair. “—I do know, I do,” he said, and she heard the sincerity in his voice. “It goes against everything in you. I know that: you never stop telling me, and… I know how hard it is, but—.”

“No you don’t, because nobody is making your choices for you, Matt. No one’s asking you to devote yourself to something you don’t even believe in for the rest of your life,” Katie said, her voice calm, but tired. How many times did she have to rehash the same conversation with him to make him understand? “You’re the one telling me, all the time, contradicting and correcting me every time I try to tell you why I don’t trust it; for something that’s supposed to be my decision, it doesn’t really feel like I have any say in it.”

Matt was quiet, and Katie turned back to her grimoire (wasn’t like anybody else in the Commune used it, so it might as well be). He poked at the other books she ‘d piled up on the table, biting his lip, clearly looking for something to say in response.

“I do know how it feels,” he said finally. “It feels like poison, like something crawling inside you that shouldn’t be there.” Katie looked at him over the top of her book, the change in his voice catching her attention. It was different, this time. It wasn’t a lecture. “It makes you feel sick, like there’s no control, like you’re vulnerable, weak,” he continued, hitting every part of the ritual she had abhorred. “It’s horrible, especially when you aren’t naturally inclined to Oriandean methods like we are.”

Katie stared at him, confused now that he spoke as if from experience. Mat gave her a weary smile, presumably sensing her confusion, and taking one of her hands. 

“When we first arrived here, I was still a  _ Dru’zan _ ,” he said, immediately catching her attention with the foreign word, the Komaric word. “Alfor agreed to take us in, but while you were too young to really make anyone worried, I needed to show the Commune that I could be trusted,” he said, thumb brushing her knuckles. “Part of that was the Rite of Arusia, which is almost identical to the Rite of Javeeno,” he explained. “Unlike the Rite of Javeeno, when the ritual ended… I didn’t get access to collective.”

Katie’s stomach churned, not just from Matt’s story but its implications for everything she’d ever feared about the rite being shoved down her throat. She understood what Matt was trying to tell her—he understood better than she realised, but hearing reality didn’t make her any more eager.

“You told me your quintessence was stolen by Komarians,” she reminded him. 

Matt sighed again, this time with a nod of his head and guilt across his face. “I know, and I’m sorry that I lied to you, but… I just want you to know that I know how much it scares you; it scared me too, and it’s not that I don’t know how difficult it is to do, I just don’t want you to be hurt, or—”

“—in danger, from our own mother,” Katie pointed out. “Something else you lied to me about.” 

Matt winced again, and Katie leaned back in her chair. Crossing her arms, wondering how best to continue. She didn’t want to argue with Matt but the news about her mother, about where they came from, had been unsettling. It put doubt in the very roots of their relationship, and the reality she’d experienced for the past decade and a half, and she didn’t like it.

“I get what you’re trying to tell me, but that was still your decision Matt. I’m… It’s not that I’m not grateful, or trying to be difficult, but if you’ve given me the luxury of making a choice by virtue of making yours, then could you please stop trying to tell me what it should be and let me use my own judgement? Because right now like it doesn’t feel like my opinion on my own life even matters to you.”

Matt, to his credit, looked shocked, and surprised, and a little bit hurt. “Katie… you really think that?” he asked.

Finally.  _ Finally _ , he seemed to get it. “Yes.” Katie stressed the word as empathically as she could.

Matt picked at one of his fingernails, thinking, then he got to his feet and walked around the table, and gave her a hug. “I’m sorry,” he said, voice empathic and words sincere. “I know I can be over the top sometimes, but I wasn’t… that’s not what I wanted to do.” His arms were warm, and for the first time in a while, it felt like they were on the same wavelength again. “I don’t know how good I’ll be at not worrying about you, but I promise, I’ll try not to be so in your face.”

“Thank you.”

It was a start, and Katie nodded, reciprocating the gesture a little tighter, happy that some of the bad air was being cleared away. She wouldn’t push to hear more about their mum yet, but maybe soon, Matt would be willing to talk to her about everything that had happened to drive him from the Komaric temple. Maybe then she’d understand why he was so adamant about the Javeeno thing. Katie doubted it would change her opinion, but understanding worked both ways. She just didn’t want to test the waters yet.

“Romelle said you were planning on going out today,” Matt ventured, pulling away and peering at her notes; Katie poked his nosey face with one of her pencils. “You’re making  _ more _ spells?”

“I’m researching,” she said, snatching the notes back and stuffing them into her bag. If the books could be taken out of the compound, she would have grabbed those too, but until she could get her phone camera to recognise and see through protection spells, she just had to rely on her notes. “Stop snooping!” Aside from being annoying as hell—and just plain rude to look at someone else’s spells without permission—if Matt looked at them too closely he might just end up lecturing her again.

“Again?” Matt pouted, his responsible-adult moment dropped for annoying-sibling instead. “What about… I don’t know, the cinema? Or seeing your school friends? Romelle said they were pleading with her to let you hang out with them when she picked you up before the holidays started.”

Her  _ ‘friends _ ’ that Matt spoke of were the two humans from her school classes that weren’t total idiots, and were vaguely entertaining enough to satisfy her brother’s worries that she didn’t socialise enough. They were okay, though Katie didn’t really see herself keeping in contact with them when she turned eighteen, or when they left for college themselves.

“Maybe; depends what they’re doing,” Katie shrugged, pulling on her backpack. She probably would make enquiries, if only for the sake of making the most of the time outside of the Commune. “Are you making dinner tonight or is it the canteen?”

“Chicken and rice,” He sighed. “If you get food while you’re out, then just make sure you—”

“Put moon water on my food, and be back before tween-time starts,” Katie repeated. “And if I see anyone weird, or any signs that I’m being watched or followed, I’ll come straight back to the Commune,” she assured him. “I’ll be fine Matt—last time was an accident. I’ll be more careful, and I’m not… I’ll be  _ fine _ . I’ll be back later,” she quickly leaned over and kissed him on the cheek before he could change his mind. “Love you.”

Her brother’s parting words—‘ _ You too sis _ ’—echoed behind her fond, but distant, as the charge of her teleport talisman snapped in her ears, the sound bouncing through the streets of Altea as she landed in the mortal realm. 

She wondered if she had been too pointed when they talked, but as well-intentioned as her brother was, she couldn’t take being forced into something she didn’t want. She didn’t blame Matt for being worried, or concerned, and the conversation about his quintessence put a new light on things too, but she couldn’t trust blindly. 

She needed to explore all her options. Matt probably didn’t need to know that hacking the access spells on the Lifeweaver grimoire to  _ technically _ steal Oriande’s spells was one of them though.

###  ~•✮❖✮•~

Hunk, Lance and Curtis were predictably efficient in finding humans to take a glamour from.

Their locations were spread evenly through Altea, giving them several points to call a safe house and set up as sacrosanct for any rituals they needed, as well as provide a haven away from—but still observing—the mortal realm. Hunk (who preferred to be the opposite of himself when under a glamour) had chosen a woman with a dark haired ponytail, skin a shade or so darker than his own, who lived on the southern edge of the city, closer to the hills; one of her badges identified her as ‘ _ Nadia Rizaavi _ ’, and Hunk adopted the name for its purposes. 

Lance had found a place for himself near the river, and his glamour was also a dark skinned human, with short dreadlocks and a stockier build than what Lance personally carried. ‘ _ Ryan Kinkade _ ’ was sufficient enough, and finally Curtis found his own disguise in a man who lived in one of the budget council flats that dominated the eastern edge of the Arus district—‘ _ Adam Wilson _ ’. His glamour’s pale skin, sandy floppy hair and glasses were the complete opposite of his own image, and a change from his usual choices, but he’d been rushing more than the others. Keith didn’t really care as long as they all worked.

Keith hadn’t yet elected a glamour, mainly because he was focusing on making each of the bases—their chosen human’s properties—sacrosanct. If they were to succeed, they were going to need access to compatible sites for rituals, spells, and everything else they would need. One that would work for each of the three other arcanes assisting him. He also wanted to be a lot more decisive in his choice.

His current glamour was one not unlike his own face, more pointed, more angularity in his eyes, more hair, and a stockier build than even the improved growth the  _ Palen-Bol _ had given him, so he felt safe enough going with the others when they started observing the school where they had first seen Katie Holt.

Apparently Oriande (or Katie’s brother, he needed to remember Matt’s knowledge of the covenant was also an obstacle they needed to factor in) had stepped in after her brush with Lance, because she was picked up directly from the school every day either by the man they suspected was her brother, or by the Firestarter they had seen in the café.

That habit continued for a couple of weeks, and suddenly the attendance stopped. At first Keith wondered if they had been spotted; the fire starter had picked up on his and Acxa’s presence that day at the café, but since then it had just been them, he hadn’t been present watching the school for precisely that reason.

Then Curtis did some scouting around and found out that the school was on break for Altea’s holidays. That certainly explained a fair bit, and also gave them an opportunity; the school wasn’t monitored too closely, and bypassing human security was never difficult. Hunk found a way into the records within a couple of hours, and found plenty of information for the persona of Katie’s glamour.

All they needed to do to confirm it was look up students who had been given detentions for the afternoon Lance had seen her, and lo and behold they found her student records.

She went by the name of ‘ _ Luka Wahlgren’ _ in the mortal realm, and by human standard at least, the records showed she was markedly intelligent; her classes specialised towards natural sciences, human technology, and a few others that would actually lend well to magical theory. She had several reprimanding notes about being unwilling to work in groups, or ignore the classes despite her high results.

Her teachers presumed she wasn’t being challenged enough by the curriculum, and a few classes had given her advanced work, or bumped her into the next class, though their reports of poor teamwork remained. Amid the collection of notes about skipping classes, was one in particular, the date they were most interested in. 

It was right there in black and white; she’d missed the entire afternoon section of the school day, and a relative—a brother—had been contacted. There was even an address, which Keith presumed would be a rough, but not exact mortal realm parallel location that the Oriandeans would use whenever a facade of human life was needed.

It wasn’t necessarily a direct link to the Commune but it was worth looking at. The most interesting concepts however came from Katie herself, or rather from her locker.

As she was focused on the sciences it was based in that building, a small stack of twelve by five inch doors in a set of alternating coloured shelves five rows high. Katie’s was in the middle, a green door that upon examination, not only had its standard key lock, but also a magical protection spell took little persuasion to open.

Did that make her naturally suspicious? Or was it merely precautionary? Either way, the spell was complex enough that it took a day or two to find the right charm to bypass it without triggering any alarm. A spare key was found in the school offices, and upon opening it, Keith found himself more intrigued.

“What are these spells?” Hunk asked, after Lance had taken the photo of the locker so they could put everything back after making copies, flipping through the notebook in his hand, which had also been monitored by a spell. So far nearly every notebook had some kind of security spell, and it was a good thing the school was offline for the holidays considering how long it was taking them to get through.

“They look like blueprints,” Curtis frowned. “This one references a manual for a human phone.”

“They are blueprints!” Hunk’s eyes widened as he flipped to the next page, holding the notebook in his hands out. “Look, this one is talking about storage spells and conjunctive binding words; she’s trying to mix human technology functions to make shortcuts for basic spellwork.”

Keith held out the page in his own hand. “I don’t think she’s trying, she’s already done it,” he said, looking at the list in the notebook. It was a collection of lines, all written in the same format. A date, coordinates, a description of the area, and some other results besides the column. “Lance, those dates remind you of anything?”

Lance frowned, and looked at the notebook. “These are… all the dates when Lady Waterdancer visited the mortal realm, but these go back weeks…” his eyes widened. “She really has been looking for her. This is thorough, planned, and if it’s hidden here, then Oriande might not have known.”

“I think the same; the next page talks about coding a scrying app, and the others describe the plans for a recharging quintessence storage instead of the phone’s battery. “Guess the skin bags that run this place aren’t so idiotic after all, and they’re just seeing the surface,” he chuckled. “Blending magic and human technology; that’s definitely something new.”

Even if they hadn’t been pursuing a different task, finding some spells like this was a gold mine, and copies of the spells were going to be very useful for the covenant in the future; blending into the human world was always a slight issue. Despite having relative physical similarities, arcanes weren’t quite as connected or entrenched. Rituals were already hard to hide, but if this was a way to reduce the time for simple searching spells or a way to inactively gather quintessence…

He hesitated to send it back yet, but Keith could feel the others becoming excited, more hopeful at the possibilities.

“Colleen was right,” Lance breathed. “She really is blessed by Komar. The finite control you’d need for this kind of spellwork is insane.”

“It’s not beyond what a  _ Dru’akar _ or  _ Dru’kasha _ should expect from their training, but there’s definitely an element of her own nature in it too,” Curtis frowned. “Though I don’t know how she applied her element to technology…” he paused. “Keith, may I speak about this with Ulaz? I feel like the input of a Lifeweaver would be useful here.”

“I’d rather not have this brought back to the temple, not even for Ulaz, but you can ask him to make a visit in the future; let’s wait until we have a few more questions though. You know how he is with making crossings nowadays.”

Curtis nodded, a little reluctantly, before continuing to make copies of the spells and notes. The rest of the contents of the locker were less revealing of Katie’s personality and character, but some photographs of her human friends made for good resources, as well as copies of her school schedule, which was taped to the inside of the locker door. 

A make-up bag revealed not only the normal foundation and eyeliner, but pots of disguised ritual components. Keith found bone dust masquerading as setting powder, and a liquid lipstick that looked more like bottled blood than any cosmetic when opened. Inspection revealed it to be an unfortunate pigeon’s blood, but blood of any kind had significance in most rituals. 

It was also absolutely banned from most of the Oriandean rituals if he remembered correctly; only a few still made use of blood magic. Not exactly what anyone would expect to find in the collection of a young acolyte in the making, so why was it in Katie’s locker? Keith was sure they would find the answer eventually.

After taking copies of all of her notes and spells, making sure to clean the secret stash of all its contents, they replaced everything exactly as it had been, and resealed the locker. Then they went deeper into the school archives, using the picture from Katie’s locker of her human friends to find the group on the cameras, watching her interaction with them to double back and find their schedules.

From there, they got their names. Ina Leifsdottir—whose image had clearly been the inspiration for the glamour Katie had used at the docks—and James Griffin. Ina was applying for an astronomy degree at a local university. Two dads who owned a small-time stock holding company. James had no identified interests for secondary education yet, though he scored well enough. Single mum who worked away from home sourcing stock for a local health food supermarket. 

After getting the records of the humans, their investigations focused on their home habits. Keith had hoped that Katie might show up at one of their homes at some point, but for the rest of the holidays, there wasn’t much luck in their stakeouts and inspections of the house listed in the school records. They did learn about her though, and confirmed the theory that Katie's free reign outside the temple had been temporarily limited.

They kept them up though, besides inspecting the areas where there was possible Oriandean activity. It gave them time to get better settled anyway, and remove their human glamours from any previous interactions and installations. And for Keith to consider his best option between the two friends.

The girl might have been a possible option, but in all honesty, after several hours watching her interactions with them on the school cameras, and the conversations Curtis stole from the wind within their homes which mentioned Katie, Keith doubted it. The relationship was a little too close to either for using either one of them to go completely unnoticed.

He needed a different approach, so they went back to looking at places they had visited with Katie outside of the school, and found the café where the photograph had been taken not far from the spot where Katie’s human residence was registered. After that, it was back to stakeout duty.

Keith had been taking his turn sitting under a chameleon spell on the boy’s bed as he diligently did his homework, the only sign of Keith's presence in the room the uncomfortable sweat on his brow that had made him stripp off his jumper and t-shirt. Keith could have tempered himself, but if he was going to babysit humans to find information on Katie, then he might as well baste them for harvesting at the same time.

Watching a teenager do their homework, no matter what realm they lived in however, was infuriatingly dull, and Keith murmured Komar’s blessings and closed his eyes with blissful relief when the phone lit up with the name ‘ _ Luka~ _ ❤︎ ’.

The boy glanced up from his homework, then blinked a few times, and almost lunged for the buzzing phone. His puppy-lovesickness might be endearing if the thought of a human—a mere  _ skin bag _ —remotely touching or thinking about any arcane in such a way didn’t revolt Keith to his core. When it was one Keith had once known to be a girl incredibly skilled at hide-and-seek and with a penchant for making trouble, it revolted him a little more than usual.

The human scrambled, quickly tapping out a response message. Then he ran around, jumping under a freezing shower, changing, and scrambling for a leather jacket hanging inside the hall before he raced out to the door.

Keith stared at the phone that had been left on the desk, then sighed and got to his feet, and looked at the message that had been left open on the screen:  _ Marcus finally let me out of the house. Can meet you and Ina at Bulgogian’s in an hour if you’re free? _

Bulgogian’s was the café where the group met for their out-of school gatherings. One of those places that functioned for sandwiches, soup and milkshakes through the day, and offered music and drinks without the hassle of club noise at night for those of the correct age.

As the sound of footsteps and curses returned, Keith concentrated, letting power flow out and burn away the world around him as he walked past the human boy racing back up the stairs to collect his phone, and into the streets of Altea. 

_ Bulgogian’s _ was lit up for its mid afternoon to evening hours with warm lighting, and as Keith looked in through the windows, pretending to observe the menu as his chameleon spell faded. There were a couple of customers, but they weren’t really paying any attention, and only one girl stood behind the counter, talking to a waiter. He had to presume there were kitchen staff too.

Reaching into his pocket, Keith charged the nugget of bornite, alerting the others to his location and informing them that he had followed James. It shouldn’t take long for them to arrive, presumably after success in their own tasks. 

In the meantime, he needed to find a temporary face for the evening. Presuming James was freakishly early as he raced towards the impromptu meet up, he had about half an hour to prepare; seeing the few customers remaining begin to leave, there was no better time to get started.

###  ~•✮❖✮•~

Matt watched his sister blink away from the tall, carved bookcase walls of the library, and deflated in his seat, leaning over the table, trying to will away the headache that had been sitting behind his eyes since Alfor had told him he’d lost track of Katie’s teleportation talisman, and investigation had landed them in the middle of a harvesting ritual.

Things would have been so much easier if Katie had just been a normal, smart kid, but she was more than that. She couldn’t be so mundane, not after all the care and deliberation that had gone into ensuring her breeding be even more successful than his own. She wasn’t satisfied with just being good at something, or without knowing as much as she could; part of it was design, part of it was the lingering influence of the Komaric temple, but most of it was just Katie.

That was great in regards to her training—even without being able to access the advanced training spells in the Oriandean grimoire, she had made up her own, and still held her own with the other initiates. In regards to their personal life it was much less convenient.

The conversation that had just happened still ringing in his ears was a prime example; part of it was his fault for pushing her so much, and try as he might, any lesson she had with Allura was bound to end badly. He should have told her about their mother sooner, and as much as his instincts pushed him to make sure she took the ritual, he knew too much pushing was not the route to take.

She’d just lash back; Katie had already discovered their mother’s continued existence by her own stubbornness and inability to keep her nose to herself and accept life at face value. She was naturally repelled by the Oriandean rituals, too. Even before, she’d been adamantly against the idea of joining the Commune, and he wasn’t sure if knowing more would be better or not.

The decisions he’d made as a sixteen-year-old with too much responsibility and no idea what right or wrong was had felt like the best ones at the time. Now he wasn’t so sure that everything Katie had forgotten had been worth it. Katie hadn’t had any more attacks since the night of the harvesting ritual, but the memory scared him. The way she’d described it…

‘ _ Just… it wasn’t just my head Matt. It felt like I was burning. Or drowning, like… like I was being buried alive, or all the air had been sucked away, all at the same time, and… _ ’

‘ _ …like the quintessence was being drained out of you? _ ’

‘ _ It felt like someone was watching me. Like they were inside me, staring at me, and I could hear things… _ ’

Burning, drowning, buried, suffocated and drained; those were all the sensations that made the  _ Palen-Bol _ so frightening, so dangerous. He remembered them with clarity, and while he didn’t think Katie understood the significance of the sensations that had bombarded her—she’d been too young to experience it herself—Matt knew that they were anything but coincidence. They were everything he’d been trying to avoid all these years, but it felt like they were out of time.

Keith had taken his trial, and if the ritual still guided those taking it, still gave wisdom and challenges to its members as it had with him, then Matt was scared for what that meant for Katie. Her headaches were unnatural enough, but if the temple was looking for her… 

“Let me guess; you just spoke to Katie and got an earful about her training session.” Matt looked up at the equally-weary looking orange haired man. “Allura’s been ranting for twenty minutes.”

“They’re a lot alike,” Matt chuckled. “Unfortunately I think that’s their main problem,” he sighed. 

Allura was stubborn, confident, and single minded as Katie was. She was also absolutely and devoutly loyal to the beliefs she’d been raised with, hated Komarians with a passion that was still untempered, and did not like it when Katie—who questioned everything, especially what she could see and touch, and always the things she couldn’t—pointed out Oriande’s flaws. She couldn’t understand why Katie didn’t see things from her perspective, and had her own sort of tunnel vision in that regard.

“Katie still has concerns about the ritual,” Coran nodded, taking the seat beside him. “She’s never made a secret of it, and it’s good that she is so sceptical in a way; she's not going to make a decision without being fully informed. Allura has her own prejudices, which doesn’t help,” he said. “I can still see you’re worried though, and I don’t think it’s regarding two teenage girls getting into a shouting match.”

Matt exhaled. Then he nodded. “I don’t think I can keep everything from her for much longer,” he said. “And I’m worried about what happened during her last attack. She’s vulnerable, but I can't force her to take the rite either, and she… I don’t think any of you understand how much she hates the idea. She might not remember the temple, but…”

There were times when he talked with Katie, times when he’d tried to get her to see things logically, see the benefits, and he heard their mother in her voice, her response. Heard the temple’s influence on their history. It lingered in her like it lingered in him, and whatever was right or wrong, nothing was going to change that. 

“…the worst part? I can’t even tell her that she’s wrong,” Matt said bitterly. “I know she’s not.”

Katie had known what he wasn’t telling her long before any of this doubt arrived. Maybe not in detail, but she knew him, and she knew when he was being sincere. When it came to the ritual, Matt knew he hadn’t been honest about that either, and if she ever asked him directly, he’d never be able to tell her with any certainty that she wouldn’t regret it.

He couldn’t even tell that to himself. Every day he felt the sickness and void where his quintessence once filled to the brim, trickled out only at the minimum needed for him to live. He knew what Katie craved in her own independence, because he’d had it once, and for all his parents had been, they hadn’t raised him to be a liar.

Matt missed the strength, the raw energy, the innate passion, the sensation of being one with the world that Katie loved so much. The worst part was feeling it every day, but not with him. He couldn’t bring himself to sit and watch Katie practice with Trigel some days, because he felt what should be  _ his _ in the older Lifeweaver’s hands.

Like Katie had forgotten, Matt could tell himself that he had left the Cult, but no-one would ever leave what they were raised with fully. It was carved into the bedrock of their being; he missed his magic, and the loss of it had turned him into a liar not just to Katie, but himself too.

Coran, thankfully, wasn’t offended; he simply reached over and put a hand on his shoulder. Alfor’s brother had been the first besides Alfor to truly try to welcome them into the Commune, and perhaps more than Alfor did, understood the choices Matt had made. 

He’d given his own quintessence to Alfor, once upon a time, when Matt had still trained to succeed, to win Komar’s blessing during his first trial, and Katie had been nothing more than the precursory steps of a ritual, markings on the stone of his mother’s ritual room, and precise tattoos drawn by hand on his father’s skin by the  _ Dru’kasha _ .

“You’re allowed to have regrets Matt,” he said. “And when you’re faced with impossible decisions, it’s easy to find them when you look back. But maybe it will make it easier for the ones ahead. You’re right; you can’t keep the truth from Katie forever, and as much as it will hurt her…”

It already was. Every potion was a lie, and every look she gave him now was laced with the doubt her own investigations had given her, questions Matt didn’t know how to give her the answers she needed anymore, doubt he knew he’d earned. Knowing who their mother was was just the first of many, and quite possibly, the truth wouldn’t make a difference anymore, but Matt knew he owed her that much.

“…we all knew it would come. You’ve raised her and kept her safe this long. It might have been hard, but you haven’t failed her.”

Coran’s attempt at reassurance didn’t go without a smile, and Matt did breathe a little easier after the man had left. Matt knew that the truth had always been looming ahead, he’d just hoped for a little longer before he needed to face it. He’d thought he’d have more time to prepare.

He would, and it wasn’t as though he could change everything now. He’d tried to do the right thing for his sister, tried to protect her from what he’d seen during his first  _ Palen-Bol _ , and Coran was right in a sense. That Katie had the freedom to decide, to choose, to argue over her future was all he’d ever wanted for her.

Matt just hoped that she would thank him for it.

###  ~•✮❖✮•~

_ Bulgogian’s _ was pretty quiet when Katie arrived, pushing the door open and shuddering after the rainstorm outside had tried to drown her glamour away from the sky. The squall had come in thick and fast off the sea, and she was glad for the warm interior. 

The girl behind the counter was busy washing up glasses at the sink, and only another group of three sat at a table near the back of the café. At the front, in one of the window booths they always tried to snag before anyone else did, was James. He waved her over, looking a little bedraggled and flushed from the weather too.

“Hey, how have you been holding up? Ina said to apologise, but she couldn’t make it out before the storm hit,” he said as she sat down, hanging her jacket to dry over the back of the end of the seat.

“She told me,” Katie said. “And better now that I’m not stuck at home.” 

“I can’t believe Marcus actually grounded you for like, two months just for skiving two classes you’re already passing; he always seemed pretty chill when I saw him,” James said, his eyes full of sympathy, and a little shock. 

“He is… to a degree. He’s probably more uptight than you think, but he’s not a jerk or anything,” Katie shrugged, picking up the chalkboard menu to look over the day’s specials. Nothing jumped out at her immediately like it normally would, apart from maybe the harissa mayo halloumi fries, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to eat. “And it wasn’t really about school.”

“I’m not following,” James frowned. “Merla told us when we last saw you that it was just the ditching he was all twisted up over.”

Katie bit her lip. Romelle had told them that. She made it a point to keep most of her life away from the few humans she spent any significant time with, so Romelle hadn’t got any further when James and Ina had tried to intercede on her behalf at pick-up before the holidays started. It was kind of an extreme reaction when she wasn’t exactly a delinquent.

Sure she had problems in her classes sometimes, and her teachers were convinced she had shitty teamwork skills, but she wasn’t a delinquent. She wasn’t one of those kids, so perhaps she ought to tell her friends a little more at least.

“I thought I’d found my mum; I found something in my brother’s room cleaning up and…I wasn’t sure she was dead after all, so I went snooping and… nearly ended up in a fight down at the docks with some creepy gang,” she sighed. “He used the location tracker on my phone when the school called him to say I’d disappeared, and he followed so I was fine but…” Katie trailed off as she realised James was looking at her like she’s just slapped him up the side of the head. “You trying to attract flies there or something?”

His jaw snapped shut and he shook his head. “No, I’m just trying to figure out what the hell you just said Luka,” he said, his voice a little strained. He ran a hand through. “I can’t tell if you’re being serious or pulling the other one.”

“I wish I was joking,” Katie said, settling with a slight edit of a truth rather than a total lie. 

“So do I!” James blurted. “You’re being serious? Luka, you should have asked me to go with you or something! Just wandering out like that is dangerous by yourself!.”

“I had a knife and I was fine until…” Katie broke off as she saw the expression on Jame’s face, then sighed, running a hand through her hair. “...I’m not  _ that  _ stupid okay? I took some precautions. I just… wasn’t expecting to be right.”

The waiter arrived, asking if she’d like to order anything, and Katie gave the vaguely familiar face a smile—‘ _ Whatever’s been popular today, please. I can’t be bothered choosing _ .’—before looking back at the human. 

“Wait, so your mum’s alive?” he asked, confused. “I thought you said she’d died.”

“I did,” Katie said. “That’s what Marcus told me, but one of those freaks recognised the picture, and… when he got home he admitted it. He didn’t really tell me anything else, but she’s not dead.”

Jame looked shocked, and a little bit like he still didn’t believe her. She supposed by human standards it sounded like some crazy trope come to life. It wasn’t exactly normal by arcane standards either. Two former Komarians living in an Oriandean temple? It sounded ridiculous to her too, and the explanation hinting at gang warfare certainly didn’t look like it was any more palatable to James.

“But… why would he lie to you about that?” James asked, sounding confused. “And if she’s alive—” he broke off and Katie gave him a wry smile, looking over at the counter where the girl behind the counter was working on something she presumed was her surprise request.

“I got the impression that she isn’t the best of people, though she didn’t  _ not _ care about us; Matt didn’t tell me because it was easier to explain to a seven-year-old and because… well I guess running away wasn’t an easy decision to make, and until I figured it out myself, he didn’t know how to bring it up,” she shrugged. “But that’s all he’s told me so far. That and whatever she did, he was involved for a while too, but nothing specific.”

“Fucking hell, Luka,” James said, leaning back and running a hand through his hair. “That’s nuts, and… just…” he didn’t sound like he knew what to say. Kati kind of commemorated. She knew what that felt like all too well. “Are you okay?”

Katie huffed, closing her eyes. “I guess; I’m kind of pissed he didn’t just tell me; being stuck at home didn’t help. We had another argument about what I’m going to do after school. Like, how can he still be expecting me to change my mind about that stupid company after he lied about something like this? I’ve been stuck preparing the application thing for it because he just won’t listen.”

James wrinkled his nose. “He’s still trying to get you to do that?” he frowned. “Luka, when you say ‘ _ company _ ’… is that a euphemism for ‘ _ gang _ ’?” he asked.

Katie gave him two points for making the connection despite the blurred lines of the equivalent story she had given, but didn’t reply. “Not exactly; it’s more a family thing, but not… not really…”

James still didn’t look like he understood completely, or like he believed her. In fact, he looked a little bit sick. “Luka, you realise this all sounds shady as fuck, right? It’s like Marcus is trying to... recruit you or something! You’re his sister! That’s messed up!”

If only James knew. Maybe the gang analogy had been better than she had thought; his abhorrence to the idea was validation. It confirmed her suspicions that she wasn’t crazy for not wanting to sign up to the Rite of Javeeno. “Oh I know that; I’ve been looking for a way around it for a while. The sooner I can leave the better. Marcus means well but… I think we’ll both be better off if we aren’t living together, you know?”

James looked like he was about to say something then, but paused as the waiter returned with her drink. “Peanut butter hot chocolate,” he said.

Katie perked up at the sight of the hot, steaming drink topped with whipped cream, cocoa dust, chopped nuts and chocolate syrup alongside a flaky chocolate stick. ‘ _ Surprise me _ ’ had definitely been a good option.

“That’s so not fair,” James whined. “If I’d known that was on the menu I’d have ordered one too.”

“Win some you lose some,” Katie stuck her tongue out at him, then picked up the teaspoon to start working away at the mound of cream. Once she’d worn it down a little, she finally had space to get a sip without giving herself a moustache. It was delicious. Chocolatey and thick and nutty and warming right through to her core. She immediately felt better, like she was rejuvenated from the inside out. Before she knew it, against the background of James’s distracting conversational chatter about his uni applications, she finished it in minutes. 

As she made to set the empty mug back down, she picked up the receipt, wondering how much the decadence was going to cost in comparison to the usual standard drinks, then stopped. There was no charge or any indication on the piece of till-roll paper of the price. Instead there was just a message, written in neat handwriting.

‘ _ Heard you had a penchant for peanut butter; like mother like daughter—hope this hits the right spot. _ ’

Katie froze as she read the message, bracing herself for a spell that would break her glamour, or for something else, she didn’t know what, but it didn’t come. Crumpling the paper, she looked at the hot chocolate, then looked around the café.

The hot chocolate probably would have been delicious, but Katie was absolutely certain that wasn’t what she had just drunk, and her eyes scanned the café, looking for any anomalies. She couldn’t see anything or feel anything odd. She couldn’t sense any quintessence. It was just the girl who made the drinks—Katie could never remember her name—and the waiter.

“Luka?” James asked. “Was it that expensive?”

It was hard to pay attention to James with the full, warm, fizz of fresh quintessence flowing through her, just beneath her skin, turning the air fresh on her tongue, making everything a little sharper. It was intense, like a high. Normally when she topped up it was gradual; the almost instantaneous energy she’d just drunk churned.

Katie tried not to think too much about where it had come from as she looked at the counter again, trying to focus this time. The barista seemed no different to usual, but the waiter. He was smiling at her, unseen behind James’ head or by the barista girl. He politely inclined his head and grinned at her. ‘ _ Lifeweaver _ ’ he greeted, a wordless, soundless formation on his lips.

Katie could have done the sensible thing and grabbed her oblivious human friend, fled for the safety of the Commune, but if a Druid or Komarian or whatever had found her, tracked her down to her favourite café, then they had planned it, and she didn’t doubt there were already more nearby.

“No, I had a free reward thingy I didn’t know about,” she said, still trying to focus. The quintessence was settling now, and the rush was coming. She could feel it. The satisfaction of being complete with her magic. She breathed through it. “Can you give me a minute? I want to ask the waiter something.”

James looked a little surprised but nodded, and Katie got to her feet, and with her heartbeat in her throat, made her way towards the counter. Upon closer approach, she could see the barista was under a spell to make her awareness of them; she probably didn’t even realise the waiter—or whoever was wearing his face—was standing there.

He leaned against the counter as she approached, arms crossed on the mock marble pvc-chipboard, the curl of a smirk still on his borrowed lips. The eyes above them glimmered a little in the light, the flash across his green irises the only sign of the glamour. “Miss me?” he asked.

The air warmed, a flash of identification, burning quintessence that rushed over her skin. The Firestarter waited patiently, and Katie took a breath as the sweet taste of chocolate and quintessence layered with suspicion formed her reply.

* * *

And up goes another one.

Hope you enjoyed the chapter! Thanks again to Fairia for pointing out my plot holes and general editing warfare assistance <3


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